Wholly original and utterly unputdownable, The Night Visitor delivers a superb story of suspense with a personality all its own. If you love gripping psychological thrillers, quirky and compelling characters, and a story with a totally unique backdrop (an old estate + the world of academia!), The Night Visitor belongs on your reading list. In short: every book should be as fun to read as this one.
Atkins threads the story with a sense of foreboding...ramping it up as the book reaches its climax ... The Night Visitor is a battle of wills ... It’s a riveting and atmospheric story of morality and psychology that will keep you turning pages well into the night.
This is a story driven by character and atmosphere rather than plot. It is not a fast-paced narrative and many of the moments of foreshadowing which avid readers of suspense will spot at once are actually red herrings. However, you will be constantly trying to guess which is which. There are beautiful descriptions of Sussex and the French holiday home idyll, but Atkins has a gift for giving even the prettiest backdrop a sinister tinge ... There are plenty of secondary characters with their own parts to play in the drama, nicely observed spats between couples and friends, humorous pokes at the life of someone thrust into the media spotlight. Underneath the accoutrements of middle class comfort, there are serious issues to be addressed about personal and professional integrity ... the plot itself is not fiendishly complicated and the complex narrative structure being built around it risks overwhelming what is a straightforward storyline. The battle of wits between the two main characters is also in danger of drowning in a wealth of detail about beetles, all-too-vivid nightmares, and Victorian family history.
Brace yourself for a breakout tale of hubris and deception with a shocking finale ... A deliciously creepy novel fueled by fraud, greed, and violence. This latest from Atkins...fits right in with the best of the psychological thrillers on everyone's lists. Readers of Ruth Ware and Gillian Flynn will love it.
Author Atkins...peppers every page with hints of things unsaid and dark underlying secrets. Sometimes the foreshadowing is a little overdone and heavy-handed, but it does not take away from the incredible number of twists and turns that appear as the novel stalks toward its ending. There’s a ghost haunting the story, both literally and metaphorically, and that sense of unease keeps pushing all the way to the last, intense page ... The need to know what will happen when the inescapable comes to pass drives the reader ever forward even as a sense of dread pervades the narrative ... With shades of Rebecca and The Secret History, Atkins has produced an eerie page-turner that will have readers guessing from the first.
...moody, meticulously plotted ... Evocative writing heightens the sense of impending doom created by the tale’s structure, keenly rendered characters enrich Atkins’ exploration of the pettier aspects of human nature, and the book’s harrowing conclusion gratifies without feeling pat.
