Cynthia Yarrow has returned home to Oxrun Station from her year long travels in Europe to find that not all is right in her family. family heirlooms have gone missing, the estate they live on is increasing run down, and things seem odd in a way she can't quite pin down.
Then she finds she is being stalked around the town by the Greybeast- a limousine that chases her on numerous occasions, trying to run her off the road. The shop she is trying to open, to break free from reliance on the family money and prove herself as independent, is targeted. What dark forces are surrounding her and her family?
This is a very early novel by Grant. It's only the third of the Oxrun Station novels. It has many of Grant's strengths, the atmosphere is suitably creepy throughout,
However, it's also one of his weaker novels. Plotting was not necessarily his greatest strength as a writer, and in this book, that's quite evident. Despite the fact that the clues are laid carefully throughout the story, the explanations when they come are something less than convincing. The mechanics of the solution just don't quite add up. The idea is good, but the execution it lacking.
It's also quite low on incident even for one of his novels.
There's a few deliciously creepy moments, a good car chase or two, and an intriguing concept hidden in there somewhere. It's just a bit pedestrian by the standards I've come to expect from Grant's fiction. As a completist, this was worth reading. If it was the first Charles Grant novel I'd read... I'm not sure I would read another.
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