When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. The letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town?

Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances.

As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.

'By no means a conventional thriller, it is an intense and disturbing piece of fiction' - Observer

About the Author
Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire. He has published eight collections of poetry and received a number of accolades including the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. His Selected Poems was published in 2016. As a librettist, his work has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world, and he is an award-winning broadcaster and dramatist. He is professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, his Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief and Birdsong was published in 2025.

Reviews
His corpse-strewn first novel derives its title from St Patrick's habit of inscribing letters on new territory to transform it...the atmosphere of creeping menace kept this heathen reading, simultaneously irked and intrigued -- Mark Sanderson * Daily Telegraph *
Crafty, sad and haunting * Literary Review *
The narrative voice turns it from a dark whodunit into something more intriguing. But Roberts never forgets that his principal responsibility is to keep us hooked - and that he does with aplomb -- Barry Forshaw * Daily Express *
Suitably disturbing and unsettling, and lingers long in the mind * Daily Mail *
A cold, existential tale... One of the terrific things the novel offers is his rendering of a town in the grip of a nameless fear * Observer *
An intriguing, gripping and highly unconventional crime novel * Times Literary Supplement *
An impressive novel * Herald *
Stylistically accomplished -- John Dugdale * Sunday Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099483786
Author Michael Symmons Roberts
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 175g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 130mm * 17mm