The Wishing Game

In the bleak winter term of 1954 something terrible happens at Kirkston Abbey School for Boys. Forty years later a journalist hovers near the truth, buried long ago by the panicked authorities.

Kirkston Abbey is no place for the weak: its rules are harsh and its discipline savage. So the struggling Jonathan Palmer cannot believe his luck when Richard Rokeby - tough, handsome, aloof - befriends him.

But Rokeby's possessive friendship is suffocating and, what starts out as an innocent game amongst friends, takes a shocking turn as Palmer finds himself powerless to stop Rokeby from unleashing a horrifying fate on them all.

A brilliantly clever psychological thriller, The Wishing Game launched Redmond to his bestseller status.

“The setting is genuinely chilling, and the atmosphere of menace and sterility riveting”

- Daily Express

Patrick Redmond's chilling debut novel is a first-rate page-turner . . . Other writers may be hailed as the new Patrick Redmond in years to come - Daily Mirror

Such is the hard-edged skill of Redmond's writing that the carefully structured revelations about the past have a bitter and compelling power - Times Literary Supplement

This impressive first novel powerfully evokes the terrible effects of cruelty and bullying, and the unravelling nightmare is sustained with suspense and pace - Sunday Mirror

Assured writing sets up evil to overcome the weak in this deft, Hitchcockian portrayal of a malevolent microcosm of warped power - Publishing News

The Wishing Game is dark and gripping, like an anaconda. I could not pull myself away: an astonishing debut - Tim Rice

Thanks to Redmond's masterfully subtle fore-shadowing, a brooding sense of impending disaster is maintained throughout his gripping suspense thriller - Publishers Weekly

Redmond has a way of making individuals seem both more human and more vile as new levels of detail are unearthed. Even his villains manage to become more understandable, vulnerable and complex as the book marches on . . . An impressive debut - Washington Post

Patrick Redmond was born in Essex in 1966. After attending school in Essex and the Channel Islands he completed a Law degree at Leicester University and then a Masters at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He spent ten years working in the City of London specialising in Commercial and EU law, before leaving to become a full time writer.

His novels have hit the bestseller lists in the UK, Germany and Italy, and have been translated into fifteen languages. Patrick lives in West London.

In the bleak winter term of 1954 something terrible happens at Kirkston Abbey School for Boys. Forty years later a journalist hovers near the truth, buried long ago by the panicked authorities. Kirkston Abbey is no place for the weak: its rules are harsh and its discipline savage. So the struggling Jonathan Palmer cannot believe his luck when Richard Rokeby - tough, handsome, aloof - befriends him.But Rokeby's possessive friendship is suffocating and, what starts out as an innocent game amongst friends, takes a shocking turn as Palmer finds himself powerless to stop Rokeby from unleashing a horrifying fate on them all.A brilliantly clever psychological thriller, The Wishing Game launched Redmond to his bestseller status.

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