You wouldn’t think it possible given the quality of SK Tremayne’s first psychological thriller, The Ice Twins, but the author has come up with something potentially even cleverer. Riffing on that twins theme, SK Tremayne has actually gone out and written two identical books. They’ve been sent to us here at Crime Fiction Lover (see above) and for the life of us we can’t tell them apart.

Both of them are called The Fire Child, and both of them have exactly the same cover and precisely 390 pages inside, telling the story of Rachel, who marries a dark and handsome man called David. So far, so Jane Eyre, but instead of a mad wife in the attic, David has a young son called Jamie. A beautiful boy and the perfect stepson… or so it seems. According to the jacket blurb, Rachel moves from London to costal Cornwall, with its windswept wilderness and abandoned tin mines, to be with David and Jamie.

Then things start to fragment. Jamie is convinced that Carnhallow House is haunted by the ghost of his mother and when Rachel starts looking into her predecessor’s death she grows more than a little suspicious. Is Jamie just a troubled boy, or is there something in the warning he gives: “You’ll be dead by Christmas.”

The book is set out in chapters that count down the days until Christmas. A really nice touch is that in both books, the author has included black and white photography of the Cornish setting, the old mines, and creepy buildings. We think it’s just brilliant that SK Tremayne has written not one but two new books and that they’re identical in every way. They’re so alike, they’re a little bit unnerving to look at.

Speaking of unnerving, both came with a magic eight-ball keyring which, when you flip it over gives you some advice. The PR note asks if we’ll survive til Christmas. You can see the answer we got, below. The book is currently £6.49 on Amazon.