The Narrow Bed

What if having a best friend was the most dangerous thing you could do?

A killer that the police are calling 'Billy Dead Mates' is murdering pairs of best friends, one by one.

Before they die, each victim is given a small white book...

For months, detectives have failed to catch Billy, or work out what the white books mean. And then a woman, scared by what she's seen on the news, comes forward.

Stand-up comedian Kim Tribbeck has one of Billy's peculiar little books. A stranger gave it to her at a gig she did a year ago. Was he Billy, and does he want to kill her? Kim has no friends and trusts no one, so how - and why - could she possibly be Billy Dead Mates' next target?

This is the next chilling novel from the queen of psychological crime - a literary puzzle set to unlock the dark side of the mind . . .

“THE NARROW BED introduces us to Sophie Hannah's possibly most entertaining character yet . . . the central plot is eventually explained with Hannah's powers of outrageous cunning at full blast.”

The genious of Hannah's domestic thrillers - along with the twistiest plots known to woman - is that she creates ordinary people whose psychological quirks make them as monstrous as any serial killer - Guardian

No one writes twisted, suspenseful novels quite like Sophie Hannah . . . unpredictable, unputdownable and unlike anything else you've read before - Liane Moriarty, author of THE HUSBAND'S SECRET

There is an admirable, complicated cleverness about her stories . . . Think Agatha Christie at her best but updated to a time of Twitter and online dating in both its glory and ignominy - Independent on Sunday

[One] of the great unmissables of the genre - intelligent, classy and with a wonderfully gothic imagination - The Times

Sophie Hannah is a bestselling crime fiction writer and poet. Her psychological thrillers - which include Little Face, Hurting Distance, Kind of Cruel, The Carrier, The Telling Error and A Game for All the Family - have received critical acclaim and have been translated into more than twenty languages. The Carrier won the Specsavers National Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year 2013.

Sophie's books have been listed for multiple other industry awards. Little Face was longlisted for the 2007 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and the IMPAC Award, Hurting Distance was longlisted for the 2008 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, and The Other Half Lives was shortlisted for the Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year Award and a Barry Award. The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives have been adapted for television as Case Sensitive, starring Olivia Williams and Darren Boyd. Sophie is also the author of The Monogram Murders, the first Hercule Poirot mystery to be written and published since Agatha Christie's death and approved by her estate.

Sophie's fifth collection of poetry, Pessimism for Beginners, was the Poetry Book Society's Winter Choice in 2007 and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award, and in 2004 she won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her psychological suspense story The Octopus Nest. Sophie's poetry is studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK.

From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 she was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She is currently a Fellow Commoner at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Visit Sophie's website, , follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sophiehannahCB1, and find her on Facebook at

What if having a best friend was the most dangerous thing you could do? A killer that the police are calling 'Billy Dead Mates' is murdering pairs of best friends, one by one. Before they die, each victim is given a small white book... For months, detectives have failed to catch Billy, or work out what the white books mean. And then a woman, scared by what she's seen on the news, comes forward.Stand-up comedian Kim Tribbeck has one of Billy's peculiar little books. A stranger gave it to her at a gig she did a year ago. Was he Billy, and does he want to kill her? Kim has no friends and trusts no one, so how - and why - could she possibly be Billy Dead Mates' next target? This is the next chilling novel from the queen of psychological crime - a literary puzzle set to unlock the dark side of the mind . . .

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