The Boy at the Keyhole

By: Stephen Giles

Narrated by: Joel Froomkin

For fans of Shirley Jackson, Sarah Waters, and Daphne du Maurier, an electrifying debut about a boy left alone in his family’s English estate with a housekeeper he suspects has murdered his mother.

Nine-year-old Samuel lives alone in a once-great estate in Surrey with the family’s housekeeper, Ruth. His father is dead, and his mother has been abroad for months, purportedly tending to her late husband’s faltering business. She left in a hurry one night while Samuel was sleeping and did not say good-bye.

Beyond her sporadic postcards, Samuel hears nothing from his mother. He misses her dearly and maps her journey in an atlas he finds in her study. Samuel’s life is otherwise regulated by Ruth, who runs the house with an iron fist. Only she and Samuel know how brutally she enforces order.

As rumors in town begin to swirl, Samuel wonders whether something more sinister is afoot. Perhaps his mother did not leave but was murdered - by Ruth.

Artful, haunting, and hurtling toward a psychological showdown, The Boy at the Keyhole is an incandescent debut about the precarious dance between truth and perception and the shocking acts that occur behind closed doors.

©2018 Stephen Giles (P)2018 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

Critic reviews

“A fiendishly efficient, gorgeously written, nasty little thrill ride of a psychological thriller. I couldn’t put it down, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll never sleep again. A true tour-de-force of a debut novel.” (Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham and Jane Steele)

well, I listened all the way......

This story had promise and I kept waiting for it to flesh out. But when it started going down hill, it went all the way.
My husband and I listened to it together and we both felt the same way. We discussed where it could have taken a more Interesting turn to have a better story and ending. There were several places. We were disappointed in this book and do not recommend.