Blair's Reviews > Body in the Woods

Claire's house is deep in the countryside, surrounded by woods. She is home alone – her husband Ian is in Qatar for work – and it's been raining for three days when a man turns up on her doorstep. It's Dean, a friend she hasn't seen in over a year. He's come to ask a favour, and to remind her how she once defined true friendship to him: 'agreeing to help them dispose of a body, no questions asked'.

The focus is not on what Dean has done but how Claire lives with her part in it. When we glimpse her impossibly overgrown garden and the mould infecting her home, it becomes clear this may be manifesting in unexpected ways, and ultimately Claire is drawn (perhaps inexorably) back to the woods.

For a novella of just over 100 pages, Body in the Woods is fantastically detailed. Sarah Lotz is such a charismatic writer, imbuing her characters with life. I had a strong sense of Claire's personality from page one. The relationship between Claire and Dean keeps the reader guessing, too – it's unclear whether they're ex-friends, ex-lovers or something even more complicated.

As with Alison Littlewood's Cottingley – which is part of the same NewCon Press Novellas line – the cover isn't very promising, but don't let that put you off. This is a compact thriller, an account of psychological decay and a disconcerting piece of weird fiction all in one.

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