


I read David Mitchell’s Slade House while surrounded by much of my extended family I still found myself piling my children into my own bed at the end of the evening, ostensibly to keep them safe from Mitchell’s haunted house and soul-sucking vampires, but if I’m honest, it was really all about me. Bad, because that fear has to be realised in an environment where I feel safe – other adults around, the scary bits wrapped up before bed, and so on. Good, because I have an unquenchable thirst for being thoroughly frightened by fiction.

T here are good and bad things for me about reading (and reviewing) thrillers.
