Melanie is a little girl who lives in a cell under heavily armed guard, who goes to lessons five days a week with other children, all strapped down tight in wheelchairs. The world outside is full of mindless things called hungries, human survivors live in a walled town, and Melanie and her friends may be the salvation of the world. Or not.

Sometimes you work out what's going to happen, and you know it's not gonna be pretty and if you're in a weakened disposition like me - laid up with a sprained ankle in the heat and humidity of Summer - you have to fight against the sense of dread you feel as you get closer and closer to being right. Honestly, I wouldn't have made the effort only it's just so damn well written. Melanie's voice of innocent but highly intelligent youth seeing the world with new eyes is brilliantly conveyed, but so are the other characters, particularly no-nonsense Sergeant Parks. The pacing is flatout but never seems rushed, the plotting excellent, the ideas scary, the suspense high. It says something that a high-end zombie novel can be marketed now as a mainstream thriller. I expect it helps that this one has real emotional resonance.

So the voice and the style and pace and the heart of the book won out over the dread, and I devoured the book with the ravenous fungal speed of a hungry. But I was not wrong.