Lots of people who work from home will recognise the panic that hits when there is no internet connection. This is followed by a cold sweat and related trembling as your fingers turn into sausages. DBC Pierre clearly wrote this ramshackle yarn for dullards such as me who can't text. Forget ghosts and aliens: technology is the new terror. The pity is that his narrative is so stupid and sloppily written. The few lame gags are beaten to death. The stagy characters, holed up in a cliched creepy seaside boarding house, seem cloned off scrambled memories of The Addams Family. Commissioned for the Hammer series of novellas intended to celebrate those crazy, hammy movies, this puny lost opportunity misses the target. Instead of exploiting the genre's whacky horror and associated thrills it falters into a squib that might beckon should you have a broken leg and be locked in a gloomy mansion miles from a book store.
