Deathwatch--Nicola Morgan

When I was a teenager, there wasn't such a category as Young Adult fiction. Although this was the sixties and we had out own music, magazines, fashion and slang, if my memory serves me well, we had to make that giant leap from borrowing books from the children's library to choosing volumes from the adult stacks, some of them not at all appropriate. (And some of us, I expect didn't ever make it across.) However, I do remember Peacock Books, an imprint of Penguin with dark green spines, aimed at growing girls but the only one I ever remember reading and enjoying was I Capture the Castle.

Anyway, DEATHWATCH is definitely aimed at young girls and tells the story of Cat McPherson, a talented athlete, but otherwise an average sort of girl with her inattention to schoolwork, her mobile phone, annoying little brother and bedroom laptop on which, against the expressed wishes of her parents she spend an awful lot of her spare time with 'Phiz', a kind of social networking site. She also has just dumped Danny because he's 'into' insects.

But before long she begins to suspect someone is watching her and following her through the Edinburgh streets. Is it Danny who isn't yet 'over' her or is it a coach from another athletics club hoping to lure her away? When she wins a race, who sends the flowers out of which drops a huge spider? And why when she logs onto Phiz one evening, does she find someone has corrupted her hard drive and introduced a picture of a huge hairy spider she cannot delete? And so the tension mounts and very soon Cat is not just running but running for her life.

This is a classy thriller which, although firmly aimed at a young readership, is a good read for all ages. As someone who is scared of spiders and wary of bugs and beetles, I found myself touching my neck as I read. I liked the fact that Cat is by no means Little Miss Perfect--although her sins are mainly down to her youth and inexperience rather than any innate badness.

And this is not just a novel about a young girl who finds herself in the eye of a nightmare not of her own making. It's about fear, about losing control, about death and revenge. It also looks at mental illness and the despair of lonely old age. However, such concerns do not slow down the action or depress the spirit for this is one classy novel. Nicola has a light touch and does not browbeat. (Thank goodness. I hate preachy writers!)

And above all, the writing is superb. If Nicola doesn't mind, I shall be using examples of her prose as the springboard for a post on my writing blog very shortly.