The setting: a faded, lonely guesthouse on the Essex coast. Outside, it's dark,
and very foggy. Inside there's no phone or internet reception, no connection wit
h the outside world. Enter Ariel Panek, a promising young academic en route from
the USA to an important convention in Amsterdam. With his plane grounded by fog
at Stanstead, he has been booked in for the night at the guesthouse. Discombobu
lated and jetlagged, he falls in with a family who appear to be commemorating an
event. But this is no ordinary celebration. And this is no ordinary family. As
evening becomes night, Panek realises that he has become caught in an insidious
web of other people's secrets and lies, a Sartrian hell from which for him there
may be no escape.
