Books
The Farm
"If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son..."
Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden, the country of his mother’s birth. But with a single phone call, everything changes.
Your mother… she’s not well, his father tells him. She’s been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. In fact, she has been committed to a mental hospital.
Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.
Daniel is immediately caught between his parents - whom to believe, whom to trust? He becomes his mother’s unwilling judge and jury. Presented with a horrific crime, a conspiracy that implicates his own father, Daniel must examine the evidence and decide for himself: Who is telling the truth? And he has secrets of his own that for too long he has kept hidden...
‘Chilling, hypnotic and thoroughly compelling. You will not read a better thriller this year’
MARK BILLINGHAM
‘Tom Rob Smith returns with a brilliant psychological thriller...An eerie ride, perfect for fans of Gone Girl’
VIV GROSKOP’S RECOMMENDED READS, RED
‘Tom Rob Smith reathes new life into the landscape, transcending the traditional crime fiction genre with an intricately-knitted thriller steeped in mythology. In The Farm, Rob Smith demonstrates the same craftsmanship that saw his highly-acclaimed novel Child 44 claim the Galaxy Book Award for Best New Writer and long-listed for the Manbooker Prize, among its many plaudits. This latest offering is a tapestry of fairytales old and new; so unsettling and oppressive that it blurs the distinctions between sanity and madness, reality and fantasy, leaving the reader guessing until the bitter end’
INDEPENDENT
‘The author of smash-hit period thriller Child 44 (soon to be a film starring Tom Hardy) shifts style for this satisfying and original psychological thriller’
5 STAR REVIEW, HEAT
‘An absorbing, upsetting, multi-layered novel; beautifully crafted, its effect enhanced by the author’s admission that his own family faced a similar experience’
THE TIMES
‘Gripping, atmospheric...This absorbing novel thrives on gradually revealing the intimate details of lives, showing how they become hidden not only from strangers, but from those closest to them. The relationship between parents and children is excellently explored as the author traces the toxic effect of lies and reveals some shocking home truths’
OBSERVER