Nothing to Fear Matthew d’Ancona Hodder & Stoughton, 272pp, £16.99

Never trust a journalist

Like his previous novels, the third book by the Spectator editor, Matthew d’Ancona, opens with a cosy domestic scene that soon descends into something more sinister. Ginny, a recent divorcee, enlists her friend Peter, a newspaper reporter, to help her househunt. The ramshackle house he finds seems a perfect location for Ginny to write her book, an academic text arguing that fairy tales explain “a basic savage truth: the way children see the dangers of the world”. She soon begins a tentative romance with Sean, her attractive but obsessively private neighbour.

Heavy Gothic overtones are the first sign of trouble. Sean’s distinctly un-Gothic job is writing software, but Ginny sees him as “the 21st-century counterpart of a medieval illuminator, hunched over his parchment”. It is midsummer, but inside Sean’s house the walls are lined with candles “in hooded black sconces”.

This modern twist on the Bluebeard fairy tale is enjoyably theatrical, until Ginny opens a locked room Sean has begged her not to enter. What she finds inside throws up frightening questions about his identity, and the book turns into a sleek thriller. It is tightly plotted and d’Ancona has advice to offer, too: when it comes to househunting (at the very least), never trust a journalist.

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