Notice to Internet Explorer users Server security: Please note Internet Explorer users with versions 9 and 10 now need to enable TLS 1. In a spooky coincidence - or is it - said cottage turns out to be the same one that Mildred rented during a holiday fifteen years before, her ill-fated honeymoon to the titular Paul, a man who was shortly afterwards arrested for the attempted murder of his first wife. It’s like water running down a drain pipe - it couldn’t go any other way, But the Ugly Sisters - Ah, that’s the challenge!

Fremlin’s a name new to me, but she seems to have a good grasp on vagaries of the human mind and certainly sounds well worth exploring. And the doubts about Philip and Freddy are brilliantly handled, especially when it’s so difficult to guess how old they are!A mysterious / unknown past isn’t particularly unusual in a crime novel, but the speculation about age is cleverly woven into the storyline. There's gentle humour too, with character types and scenarios you'd expect to see in any Fawlty Towers or Agatha Christie.

With Paul possibly released from prison, could increasingly spooky happenings indicate his presence and increasing danger for the trio? I tried reading it a couple of months ago during my own holiday to Whitby but given that the book is set around a young woman going to help out her frazzled sister who is taking her two young children on a seaside break, it felt a little much at the time. The Hours Before Dawn is on the shelf, and I’m looking forward to it all the more having enjoyed this one so much.

though we're kept hovering between knowing whether there is material danger stalking the sisters or whether it's just paranoia.

This novel unfolds slowly and, like her debut novel, this is much more about the characters than anything else. I'd read a review saying it was old fashioned and dated but I didn't find it so at all, certainly no more so than any mid century Agatha Christie. Mildred betrayed him to the police, and now he is due to be released and may be seeking revenge By coincidence, Mildred is staying in the same cottage they honeymooners in all those years ago.Next we have Isabel who seems to get overwrought at the drop of a hat because she senses her husband may not love her and their two boys quite as much as she'd like him to. Isabel is attempting to cobble together a pleasant family holiday and allow her new husband to settle in to his stepfather role with her young children, if only every single step of the process did not send her into paroxysms of anxiety. Before she goes, she tells her boyfriend; the irresponsible, irrepressible, Freddy, that she is leaving.

Unfortunately, the cover of Uncle Paul – the ‘nightmare summer holiday’ tagline and a cherry-picked quote branding the author ‘Britain’s Patricia Highsmith’ – oversells the book. Three funny and vastly different sisters who sometimes irritated me but also humoured me in equal measures. Years ago, Mildred was on honeymoon at the same resort with her husband, the eponymous Uncle Paul, when she discovered that he had attempted to murder his first wife. It too has that element of doubt, there mostly others disregarding the protagonist’s fears because she’s a woman and a young mother. It starts with sensible Meg receiving a message from older sister (and often overwrought), Isabel about a problem with their half-sister, Mildred.Their motivations and views on the world seemed immature and more naive than I expect from women that of that age and experience, even in that era.