The Valley is a fast-paced, psychological thriller about a murder. It is both a classic page turner and a dark morality tale.

The Valley it refers to is more a mindset than a precise geographical area. It is the modern urban successor to the middle class suburbs of the sixties and seventies, with tastefully extended Victorian terraced houses taking the place of mock-Tudor semis. There is the same fear of being left behind, the same frustration at unrealised dreams, and the same desire to live in something more meaningful than a postcode.

It is similar in style to books like The Talented Mr Ripley and The Secret History, with an enigmatic and charismatic anti-hero at its centre, but set in the contemporary middle class London surroundings that most novel readers can relate to.