Uncle Paul: Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday

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With Paul possibly released from prison, could increasingly spooky happenings indicate his presence and increasing danger for the trio? And all to no purpose, for nothing had happened—nothing had ever been going to happen; it had all been in Mildred’s imagination. In my mind, she is bracketed with Celia Dale, whose marvellously sinister domestic noir, A Helping Hand, was one of my favourite reads from last year .

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. Three funny and vastly different sisters who sometimes irritated me but also humoured me in equal measures. The tension managed to build almost imperceptibly as the characters go about their seaside holiday with trip to the beach, fairground and hotels, all the whole the sisters start to worry about the people they are spending time with, could one of them be Uncle Paul in disguise? The characterisation is sublime, from the worrying sister Isabel to Cedric, who is not a main character. It wasn't fun - mildly entertaining at best - and rather predictable in its plot lines - and revelations - although I didn't imagine that Mildred could be as mean as she turned out to be - warped in her mind apparently by her long lost love for - Uncle Paul.

It too has that element of doubt, there mostly others disregarding the protagonist’s fears because she’s a woman and a young mother.

I could describe it as an old-fashioned domestic thriller, but even that might be a bit of an overstatement: the emphasis is firmly on the domestic. Her many crime novels and stories helped modernize the sensation novel tradition by introducing criminal and (rarely) supernatural elements into domestic settings. Its not really the Agatha Christie cosy crime story that its sold as - even the tagline on the cover 'Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday' rings false - marketing spin rather than accurate.There's gentle humour too, with character types and scenarios you'd expect to see in any Fawlty Towers or Agatha Christie. I didn't figure out who the culprit was, which was nice, but I also wasn't driven to keep reading as I was withe The Hours Before Dawn and The Jealous One, which is why it took me 2 months to read. I guessed the denouement from quite a way off, although it did not seem as though it had been well hidden. Author Celia Fremlin received an Edgar Award for her suspenseful debut novel, The Hours Before Dawn. In a seaside caravan resort, Isabel and her sister Meg build sandcastles with the children, navigate deckchair politics, explore the pier’s delights, gorge ice cream in the sun.