The Lighthouse begins on a North Sea ferry, on whose blustery outer deck stands Futh, a middle aged, recently separated man heading to Germany for a restorative walking holiday. As he travels, he contemplates his childhood; a complicated friendship with the son of a lonely neighbour; his parents’ broken marriage and his own. But the story he keeps coming back to, the person and event affecting all others, is his mother and her abandonment of him as a boy, which left him with a void to fill, a substitute to find. A debut novel packed with suspense and intrigue.