At 4:32 this morning when I was roused out of a deep slumber by Winston, my rather ripe Golden Retriever, who decided to make his presence known by jumping on the bed to perch on my husband’s head, I begrudgingly got up. I quickly grabbed S.K. Tremayne’s psychological thriller The Ice Twins and devoured the last few pages while the sun came up. It is one of those books that you can’t put down! I can best describe it as if Daphne du Maurier wrote Gone Girl after seeing The Shining. Creepy Aryan twins- check. Desolate landscape- check. Family tragedy- check. Betrayal- check. Ghosts- checks. Heathcliff like character- check. Madness- check. I mean really, how could you go wrong?!

I won’t give more away than the jacket sleeve does but there are so many twists and turns in the story that it would be impossible for me to even attempt a spoiler. A London based couple are grappling with the aftermath of the death of one their identical twin daughters. In order to flee from their grief and slowly crumbling life they move to a remote island off the coast of Scotland to give themselves and their surviving daughter a fresh start. The descriptions of the darkly beautiful landscape are breathtaking and menacing which helps to create the gothic atmosphere for the story to play out. The novel’s twists and turns are a roller coaster ride of fear, doubt, morbid curiosity and appalling realization.

S.K. Tremayne is a pseudonym so I did some sleuthing to find the author’s true identity and by sleuthing I mean 45 seconds of googling before stumbling upon his Wikipedia listing – “Tom Knox is the pseudonym of British writer and journalist [1] Sean Thomas…. As a journalist he has written for The Times, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian. In 2013 he became a blogger and commentator for the Daily Telegraph in the UK. When he writes under the name of Tom Knox, he specializes in archaeological and religious thrillers. More recently he has written novels under the pseudonym S K Tremayne.” If his other literary personae are as good as this one I will surely be checking those out too!