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The Wishing Game
On sale
21st May 2015
Price: £8.99
In the bleak winter term of 1954 something terrible happens at Kirkston Abbey School for Boys. Forty years later a journalist hovers near the truth, buried long ago by the panicked authorities.
Kirkston Abbey is no place for the weak: its rules are harsh and its discipline savage. So the struggling Jonathan Palmer cannot believe his luck when Richard Rokeby – tough, handsome, aloof – befriends him.
But Rokeby’s possessive friendship is suffocating and, what starts out as an innocent game amongst friends, takes a shocking turn as Palmer finds himself powerless to stop Rokeby from unleashing a horrifying fate on them all.
A brilliantly clever psychological thriller, The Wishing Game launched Redmond to his bestseller status.
Kirkston Abbey is no place for the weak: its rules are harsh and its discipline savage. So the struggling Jonathan Palmer cannot believe his luck when Richard Rokeby – tough, handsome, aloof – befriends him.
But Rokeby’s possessive friendship is suffocating and, what starts out as an innocent game amongst friends, takes a shocking turn as Palmer finds himself powerless to stop Rokeby from unleashing a horrifying fate on them all.
A brilliantly clever psychological thriller, The Wishing Game launched Redmond to his bestseller status.
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Reviews
Such is the hard-edged skill of Redmond's writing that the carefully structured revelations about the past have a bitter and compelling power
The Wishing Game is dark and gripping, like an anaconda. I could not pull myself away: an astonishing debut
Redmond has a way of making individuals seem both more human and more vile as new levels of detail are unearthed. Even his villains manage to become more understandable, vulnerable and complex as the book marches on . . . An impressive debut
This impressive first novel powerfully evokes the terrible effects of cruelty and bullying, and the unravelling nightmare is sustained with suspense and pace
Assured writing sets up evil to overcome the weak in this deft, Hitchcockian portrayal of a malevolent microcosm of warped power
The setting is genuinely chilling, and the atmosphere of menace and sterility riveting
Thanks to Redmond's masterfully subtle fore-shadowing, a brooding sense of impending disaster is maintained throughout his gripping suspense thriller
Redmond's teenage characters are well-drawn, and the small universe of the school becomes a real emotional landscape, where the pupils are credited with passionate and complex emotion
Patrick Redmond's chilling debut novel is a first-rate page-turner . . . Other writers may be hailed as the new Patrick Redmond in years to come