Terror keep

About the book

John Flack, confined at Broadmoor, has filled notebooks with elaborate criminal schemes and takes fierce pride in their completeness. The possibility that these writings may reach other hands concerns the authorities, but Flack's own ambitions are no less dangerous. Against this opening, Margaret Belman's arrival at Larmes Keep introduces an apparently attractive place whose reassuring surface cannot be taken for granted. Mr. Reeder's modest manner and penetrating understanding of criminal behavior become essential as separate strands of danger draw together. Wallace combines a personal threat with the menace of organized planning, concealed spaces, and misleading hospitality. The novel's language about mental illness reflects its period; the suspense rests on this particular criminal's actions and designs rather than any reliable account of psychiatric conditions.

• Criminal planning
• Deceptive refuge
• Intelligence and vigilance

Why read it

The contrast between Reeder's unassuming presence and the elaborate threat facing him gives the thriller its characteristic tension.

English text of the Hodder and Stoughton edition