Uncle Paul: Welcome to the Nightmare Summer Holiday

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In this one, Meg, who is the youngest but most sensible of three sisters is summoned to a seaside resort by Isobel, who is worried about their older sister Mildred.

The tension builds nicely with odd occurrences being explained away by the mundane so even no-nonsense Meg starts to wonder if she's just becoming obsessed with Uncle Paul. Fremlin is always wonderful for her acute observations and for the social history embedded in her books and, for the first half, the creepy element felt like an add on to me that rather distracted from all the delights of awkward children (Cedric, the boy who knows everything; Peter and 'sharkie' who lives under the caravan steps), squabbling with fellow guests at a nearby hotel over when to light a fire, and the inevitable colonel who wants to run everything. 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? How the thriller is resolved is as questionable as any crime novel but I thought the atmosphere, scene-setting, and characters well done.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. In fact, I may well have picked it up following your reviews as it’s sitting in my TBR bookcase as we speak. Years ago, Mildred was on honeymoon at the same resort with her husband, the eponymous Uncle Paul, when she discovered that he had attempted to murder his first wife. 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.

She is good at making ordinary domestic situations frightening by slowly turning up the tension and playing on all our fears. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer. Fremlin is so adept at capturing the challenges of holidaying in the temperamental British summer, from the tension of being cooped up in a caravan with family members, to squabbles over what to do next, to the sense of pressure we feel to be outside enjoying ourselves at every moment, even if the weather is dreadful and all we want to do is to stay indoors. Fifteen years ago, Mildred discovered that her husband, Meg and Isabel’s, ‘Uncle Paul,’ was not who he seemed and he went to prison.When I spotted that several other Celia Fremlin novels have also been reissued, I was immediately keen to discover more. Three funny and vastly different sisters who sometimes irritated me but also humoured me in equal measures. Her second thriller, Uncle Paul, evokes a similar atmosphere of menace as the paranoia of her characters — and readers — combine to form a mood of increasing tension. These two sisters confront the fact that in the past they had feelings for a certain Uncle Paul - who was sent to prison for bigamy and the murder of his first wife - it's on the back cover! What follows is a wonderfully slow burn thriller with the tension ratcheting up by degrees until everyone is at screaming pitch.

And the doubts about Philip and Freddy are brilliantly handled, especially when it’s so difficult to guess how old they are! An independent young woman living alone in a London flat, Meg is in the throes of a new relationship with Freddy, a charming, witty pianist with a relaxed attitude to life.This was a mistake because this was where the book gets the most terrifying, and so I was scared to death to turn out the lights and go upstairs. Surely, he’d be looking to start a new life elsewhere, keen to put the past behind him following his release from jail? In summary, Uncle Paul is an utterly brilliant novel, a very clever and skilfully executed exploration of fear and suspicion, very much in the style of Patricia Highsmith’s and Shirley Jackson’s domestic noirs laced with the social comedy of Barbara Pym. Now, fifteen years on, Mildred is worried that Paul may be out of prison and looking to take his revenge – especially when she hears strange footsteps scuffling around the cottage in the middle of the night!

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 . I must admit however, that this was my least favourite of the few books I've read by her; The Hours Before Dawn is the best one I've read so far, and I plan to read more sooner rather than later. The problem is that Isabel, who has two young sons, is currently on a caravan holiday at the seaside, with second husband, Philip.With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. So, with the hapless Isabel struggling to calm Mildred down, Meg feels pressured into making the trip to the coast to sort everything out. On the surface, Uncle Paul could be the relatively innocent story of three sisters getting caught up in troublesome domestic matters during a seaside holiday.