Ted Lewis meets Stephen King, and it all reads a bit like a Micheal Marshall Smith story, which is as heady a brew as you could hope for in this fast, slick, sinister, creepy tale. A teacher takes up a position in his old school in an isolated mining town, but he's not planning on staying for long. The distant past and the uncomfortable present are both closing in on him as he revisits the disappearance of his young sister. Staying in a cottage that was the scene of a recent ugly murder-suicide and chased by nasty people for gambling debts, he is not in for a comfortable time. Twisty, turny, well-written and somwhow succeeds in keeping the protagonist mostly sympathetic without letting him off the hook.