Uncle Paul: Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday

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Meg learns to be more accepting of the perspective of others; to not dismiss the silliness of women, who don't have good vocabs and rational faculties. A mysterious / unknown past isn’t particularly unusual in a crime novel, but the speculation about age is cleverly woven into the storyline.

This exhausting topic, which was apt at the best of times to reduce Isabel to quivering uncertainty, seemed on this occasion to be straining her powers of decision almost to the point of paralysis. I suppose you could say the story's focus is on the way we construct our realities, and how easy it is to lose the thread of our own truth, especially when danger threatens.Fremlin manages the tension extremely well here, dialling it up and down a few times as the story unfolds.

There's gentle humour too, with character types and scenarios you'd expect to see in any Fawlty Towers or Agatha Christie. I did so enjoy Fremlin's debut, The Hours Before Dawn so I'm not ready to give up on her, but neither am I anxious to read another soon.Next we have Isabel who seems to get overwrought at the drop of a hat because she senses her husband may not love her and their two boys quite as much as she'd like him to. Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back. Not wanting to repeat that experience, I made sure to finish the last 50ish pages the next day during the daylight hours.

With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics.All augmented by sinister happenings that might be real or imaginary: the sound of footsteps outside; the creaking of a wardrobe within; the brush of something unknown against the cheek. The backdrop of the seaside holiday adds to the incongruity; you’re not supposed to be scared while on vacation in August at the beach where it is warm and sunny, except it’s England, so half the time it’s cold and rainy. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer. Meg has a sister, Isabel, plus an older, half-sister, Mildred, who looked after her, after her mother’s death. The central protagonist is Meg, who, despite being the youngest sister is easily the most level-headed of the three.

Unfortunately, the cover of Uncle Paul – the ‘nightmare summer holiday’ tagline and a cherry-picked quote branding the author ‘Britain’s Patricia Highsmith’ – oversells the book. Unfortunately, Mildred has also landed up in the area, smarting from a fall-out from her husband and renting a coastal cottage of her own. Meg and Isabel were just girls when "Uncle Paul" married their older half-sister, Mildred, and he soon vanished from their lives upon his exposure as a bigamist and a murderer. There’s some marvellous humour here too, especially from the interactions between the various guests at the hotel, from the gallant Captain Cockerill to the stoic Mrs Forrester and her young son, Cedric – one of those insufferable little boys who knows everything and insists on getting his own way.

It’s like water running down a drain pipe - it couldn’t go any other way, But the Ugly Sisters - Ah, that’s the challenge! It’s all very dated too – which, duh, this is a novel originally published in the 1950s, but I found it unpleasant, especially Meg’s boyfriend Freddy (presented as a charming cad, reads as a bully) and the laid-on-thick ageism towards Mildred (who can’t be more than 40! It’s a curious combination of wry humour (which I enjoyed), gentle suspense and an ending that rings rather hollow and melancholy.