Cat's Eyes — Alan Scholefield

A screech of brakes on wet tarmac - a cat fleetingly seen - then a crash... These were the beginnings of the nightmare for Rachel Chater.

Still convalescing after the horrific accident and with her writer husband Bill abroad on business in California, she is left with her baby daughter Sophie, in an austere Sussex farmhouse, with only an unfriendly children's nurse and a half-witted daily help for company. Rachel is a stranger to this isolated part of the Sussex Downs. With no real friends nearby, she longs for her old life in America and grows increasingly anxious in the dark and gloomy house.

The future is far from exciting when you are plagued by nightmares and drowning in guilt - and when a series of unexplained and menacing events occur, her nervousness turns to terror. At the heart of her fear is the growing belief that an injured cat is somehow trying to avenge itself on her. Or is it?

At night she hears it clawing and scratching against the house; but it is a human hand that taps at the window, a human face that presses against the glass: the face of a dead man -- a face she recognises instantly...

As Rachel's chilling psychological nightmare edges ever closer to reality, dark secrets begin to unravel threatening not only her sanity but her marriage, her identity and the safety of her family...

Alan Scholefield was born in 1931 in Cape Town, South Africa. After leaving university he became a journalist and travelled widely in southern and central Africa, Europe, and America. He now lives in Hampshire with his wife and has three daughters. Most famous for his Macrae and Silver series, Scholefield has also written other novels, including Venom, which was made into a film in 1981.