Available Formats
Hardback
Published: 8th November 2022
Paperback
Published: 12th December 2023
Paperback
Published: 4th August 2022
The Last House: an intense psychological thriller of locked doors and family secrets
By (Author) R. G. Adams
Quercus Publishing
riverrun
8th November 2022
4th August 2022
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Hardback
320
Width 162mm, Height 236mm, Spine 36mm
560g
'I'm completely hooked. Adams is a skilled and engaging writer' Alex Marwood
THREE GENERATIONS OF SECRETSSocial worker Kit Goddard is convinced that Sandbeach Child Services have let an injured seventeen-year-old boy down, just like they'd done to her brother ten years earlier. Since the referral came in, it had been passed between departments, her own manager Georgia and colleague Tim brushing it off as a low risk, low priority case. But Kit can't shake the feeling that something isn't quite right. Scanning the referral, she notices that the house seventeen-year-old Dylan Meredith lives in with his 'weird' mother had been described as decrepit. The anonymous caller said he was injured, frightened and afraid to tell the truth. As Kit begins to look deeper into the history of the family, she learns that Dylan's grandmother had been an inpatient at Penlan psychiatric hospital and had died there in 2012. But as her colleague Tim had stressed, this was not a case for psychiatric services. In a bid to trace the anonymous caller for more information, Kit sets off to the small coastal town of Rock. Only to be confronted with the sense of strangeness that surrounds the Meredith family and the rumours that have troubled this small community for years. An intense psychological thriller, The Last House shows that the darkest secrets are hidden within the walls. But no matter how big you build them the truth will always find a way of breaking out.I'm completely hooked. Adams is a skilled and engaging writer, confident in her knowledge - and it shows. Social worker Kit is a fascinating protagonist, burdened by a troubled youth and equipped, because of it, to show us a fresh perspective on the world of crime and the "clients" she endeavours to help. -- Alex Marwood
Social workers often get a bad press but this thoughtful and moving novel, written by someone with plenty experience of the profession, shows how impossibly difficult their job is * Literary Review *