Was it simply, in the coroner's words, a stupid and tragic accident?
Sybil Crawfurd would never have expected her brother, Hugo, to die like that, so suddenly, in a fall from the balcony of a Brighton hotel . . .
The handsome, intelligent headmistress of a girls' school on the south coast, Sybil is not alone in desperately wanting 'but two hours converse with the dead'. Lavinia Trent, the well-known actress, and Bridget Nagel, whose journalist husband was killed in the Falklands, are equally ready to enter the bizarre, comic, unnerving world of paranormal experiment . . .
'Gripping entertainment form start to finish' Listener
'False trail follows false trail; the curtain is tantalizingly lifted and then, again, lowered . . . King is now writing at the height of his powers' Spectator
'His most masterful, comic and moving novel yet' Financial Times
'One of the most haunting and haunted novels of the year' Sunday Times