Home Before Dark

Maclean is a formidable writer, who takes simple ideas and turns them into compelling thrillers. In the recent Home Before Dark, Maclean takes on a subject I'm surprised hasn't been dealt with more: the internet chat room, which was one of the earliest attractions of online life and that has proven to be among the most dangerous. I'm a sucker for the twisting plot, and that's one of Maclean's specialities. - Jeffery Deaver, writing in Guardian

Utterly gripping - the best thriller of the Internet age I have ever read. It lures you into the seductive world of the chat-room, where nothing is quite what it seems, and the mundane shades chillingly into the sinister. There were times when I scarcely dared to turn the page. - Magnus Linklater

A classic thriller of the highest quality - complex, meticulously researched and skilfully told - but it goes further, taking the genre into cyber-space and giving terror a whole new dimension. The murderous hacker enters unobserved into his victims' lives. Reality and virtual reality become confused. The protagonists criss-cross the globe by train and plane but the digital avenger is always one step ahead. A compulsive read. - Piers Paul Read

Tautly crafted and chilling, if there's a rush of people cancelling internet chatroom accounts this month blame the dark talent of Charles Maclean - Daily Record

I was SO impressed by Charles Maclean's HOME BEFORE DARK - what a gripping, disturbing, utterly up to the minute thriller - such an achievement - Joanna Trollope

Packed with blood, murder and mayhem, HOME BEFORE DARK is a particularly disturbing thriller - menacing...gruesome...original. Gird yourself and don't underestimate Maclean. - Spectator

A thriller that gripped me by the throat and wouldn't let go for 36 tortured hours, HOME BEFORE DARK chills the eyes as well as the spine. I have never seen such evil leak out of a computer screen. Maclean is a master of electronic horror. - Ferdinand Mount

Like the best horror stories, HOME BEFORE DARK creates a stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere; it catches you up so you feel you are a player in the plot, not just an observer. It doesn't let you rest: you wake in the night and carry on reading - and as more pieces of the jig-saw fall into place, you begin to see the potential horror just as the protagonists become aware of it. Marvellously ingenious and unexpected. - Scotch Whisky Review