Dark Tides - Tapa dura

The novel's formula is clever and well executed and his portrayal of the island duly atmospheric. (Marcel Berlins The Times)

'This is a truly compelling piece of work. He utilises the more sinister aspects of Manx folklore, forging from it a truly atmospheric thriller that is impossible to put down. If Ewan chooses never to go back to his lighter Good Thief's Guide series and continues to produce novels like Dark Tides, readers will have little cause to complain.' (Barry Forshaw Daily Express)

Chris Ewan's Dark Tides is a hybrid of a novel, the author managing to blend elements of 90s horror films I Know What You Did Last Summer(teenagers do something bad; vengeance is wreaked) and Scream(dead mother; tragic daughter) with the conceit from, of all stories, David Nicholls's One Day (the "one day" in Ewan's novel being 31 October). The remote island setting - "eighty thousand people, clinging to a rock thirty-two miles long by fourteen miles wide in the middle of the Irish Sea" - gives it a touch of The Wicker Man as well. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, or at least for schlock-horror, but Ewan skilfully avoids potential mantraps of melodrama or gore to deliver a truly chilling and thoroughly enjoyable read. (Alison Flood Observer, Thriller of the Month)

'Resembling Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but with an organising principle borrowed from David Nicholls's One Day, the novel is more streamlined, linear and film-like than Ewan's earlier work. A clever, gripping blend of thriller and detective-story elements.' (John Dugdale The Sunday Times)

What's compelling about Dark Tides is simply that it's very well written. While you're reading it, you won't be able to think about anything else. Your mind won't drift, and you'll be wrapped up in this Halloween thriller right up to the final full stop on page 440. (Crime Fiction Lover)

[a] fast-paced story (Howard Calvert SHORTLIST)

A top book to read by torchlight (Jon Wise Daily Sport)

A bone-chilling mystery set on the Isle of Man (My Weekly)

'Ewan writes lyrically and this is a chilling, intelligent and brilliantly structured novel.' (Catholic Herald)