Alice Hoffman beautifully choreographs the battle between nature and civilisation to mirror the action in her mesmerising 13th novel The River King. Although set in the contemporary, three block-long village of Haddan, Massachusetts, its enchanting gothic flavour makes it feel like a much earlier era. Haddan School, built perilously close to the river in 1858, "had been fashioned out of river rock, grey slabs flecked with mica", and the cupboards have a "distinctly weedy odour". The school"s folklore matches its mid-19th century beginnings with tales of blood-seeped roses, a hanging from the rafters and people lead astray by the "pale green light rising from the river each evening" into "fields rife with late-blooming asters and milkweed". The four outsiders at the novel"s heart are brought together by the dramatic forces of love and death: two new students, Gus, a rebellious, hapless loner; Carlin, a beautiful swimmer from Florida; Betsy, the unconventional photography teacher trapped in a conventional engagement, and Abel, the local cop who comes to the school to investigate a drowning. After a tragic flood, the novel picks up pace and switches from gothic horror to detective story with hints of The X Files. A ghost appears in Betsy"s photos and leaves mementoes from the river all around the school. When the drowned corpse is found to have faecal matter in its lungs in a cleaned-up river, the plot takes on echoes of Chinatown and is no less riveting for that. Although Hoffman misses some of the menace and narrative drive of a true thriller, her portrait of a secluded world, which has developed its own secrets, rules and inability to confront evil, weaves a murky and disturbing spell. --Cherry Smyth