A Narrow Door: The electric psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

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Harris managed to both romanticize academia, as readers tend to do, and shine a light on its underbelly.

I found the dual voices and timelines a little confusing, as were all the nicknames, and I missed Staightley's honesty and humour. I read a lot and I have a degree in literature, so when I read something I expect some standards to be reached. I'm not sure if its because I haven't read the previous books in this series not realising that it was one or if for some reason I just didn't engage.

When I first began to read, about a week ago, I quickly realised that I needed to go back to the previous instalment of this intriguing series: Different Class. In each book he has been firmly resisting all that he can but he particularly rejects any suggestions of his retirement. In this case, it is the gender division that plays the largest role in the story, but the difficulty of entry is no less significant. The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter.

We are again at St Oswald's, which is now no longer, 'St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys,' but has been re-branded as, 'St Oswald's Academy. I regret that I couldn’t read it before publication, but I’m so grateful that my request was approved anyway.But Harris used the trope so deftly, and I truly felt as though I was making Rebecca’s discoveries alongside her.

The recurring image here is the railway tunnel and its accompanying air vents, left over from Malbry’s days as a mining town, now abandoned, and in Becky’s mind, the lair of Mr Smallface.

I feel like I’ve missed so much, and yet I’ve suddenly discovered a new-to-me author with over 20 novels in their backlist. This brings her, as a junior teacher, to take a job at King Henry’s School, St Oswald’s traditional rival, where Conrad vanished without trace nearly 20 years before. Forty year old Rebecca Buckfast has become the first headmistress in the history of St Oswald’s school and is determined to make changes.

And when Straitley suffers another heart attack and is hospitalised soon afterwards, he has to trust that Ms Buckfast will do as she has promised - but firstly, his head teacher tells him, he must listen to the story of the disappearance many years’ ago of her elder brother before deciding if his suspicions need to be reported to the authorities. Smallface and all the scary noises coming from the sink drain comes across like a bargain basement version of Pennywise the Clown. How does Dominic’s protectiveness towards Becky and her daughter contribute to her attitude towards men in general? It is made clear that appointing a woman to this role is quite shocking in such a traditional setting.Straitley’s discovery of Eric’s secret life – a man he has known since childhood, and whom he thinks he knows – shakes him so profoundly that he allows himself to be manipulated into concealing a murder. And as Straitley is drawn deeper into her account, he finds that not only he, but his friend Scoones have parts to play in the tortuous tale. I received a digital copy of this novel from the publisher, OrangeSky Audio, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. We like to think of children as inhabiting a special, insulated world: to think of them as fierce, sometimes cruel, emotionally independent beings with their own personality and agency is troubling, but necessary. The story takes a long time to unravel and for me was too crammed with detail, so that I kept forgetting who was who.