Graham Park is in love.  But Sara Ffitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery.  Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice.  He knows that They are out to get him.  They are.  Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games.  The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him.  But he must find an answer before he knows the question.

Park, Grout, Quiss - no trio could be further apart.  But their separate courses are set for collision...

"A feast of horrors, variously spiced with incest, conspiracy, and cheerful descriptions of torture... fine writing" The Times

"The author's powerful imagination is displayed again here every bit as vividly as in his debut" Financial Times

"Establishes beyond doubt that lain Banks is a novelist of remarkable talents" Daily Telegraph