Harwood's well-received 2004 debut, The Ghost Writer, drew heavily on the 19th-century ghost story. Now, with The Seance, he plunges us headfirst into the genre. Wilkie Collins would be proud: this is a Victorian world of mesmerism and spirits, vapours and delirium, doomed inheritances, shivering maids and spooky visitations in the night. Constance Langton is a toddler when her baby sister, Alma, dies, leaving her mother catatonic with grief. Constance grows up in their Holborn house, alone and friendless, convinced (because of her mother's indifference) that she is a foundling. Eventually, in desperation, she takes her mother to a seance where the bogus spiritualists obligingly produce lisping baby Alma - with disastrous consequences. Constance then inherits a crumbling Suffolk pile. The family lawyer, Montague, darkly advises her to “sell the Hall unseen; or burn it to the ground” before handing her a packet containing a rundown of all the dreadful goings-on that the ill-fated house has seen. As befits the form, there are narratives within narratives - a tricky structural task that requires a large suspension of disbelief. However, Harwood is great at chilling scenes - a terrified stonemason lost in the pitch dark watches a figure in a monk's habit process slowly towards him through a wood, suits of armour move, lanterns flicker, servants are petrified. Readers who enjoy this sort of thing will devour The Seance in a sitting.

The Seance by John Harwood
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