Del-Del

Des and Hannah and their children are a normal close-knit family or so it seems. And their young son, Sam, for all his brilliance, gives every sign of being a normal little boy.

Then, quite suddenly, exactly a year after the death of the middle child, Laura, Sam starts to act peculiarly. His strange behaviour, treated at first as a ‘he’ll get over it’ syndrome, soon takes a demonic twist which can no longer be ignored, or indeed explained. For it seems that Sam is somehow possessed by a terrifying and evil presence he calls Del-Del, and Del-Del’s influence is malign to a frightening degree. Sam tries to wrestle with Del-Del in his own way, and sometimes there are periods of normality which suggest that Del-Del has finally been defeated.

But Del-Del is cunning, and knows exactly how and when to strike again. Under the intolerable stress of Sam’s increasingly dangerous and anarchic behaviour, the fabric of the family begins to come apart and only Sam’s sister Beth has the tenacity to go on probing for the cause, to piece together every clue which could destroy Del-Del forever. Inevitably a confrontation must come, and the climax to this tense psychological thriller leads to a conclusion of quite brilliant unpredictability and excitement.

Del-Del, with its thoroughly contemporary setting and characters, is a novel so startling and original that it will no doubt win for Victor Kelleher readers of any age who respond to story-telling which grips like a vice.