A Flaw in the Design

A nephew. An uncle. A psychopath - but which of them is it?

Gil knows his nephew Matthew is dangerous. The signs were there early - on a family holiday Gil's daughter was discovered nearly drowning at the bottom of a swimming pool, while Matthew looked on from the deck.

Now seventeen, Matthew is orphaned when his parents die in a car crash. He must leave his life on the Upper East Side of Manhattan behind, to live with Gil, his wife and daughters in rural Vermont. He is insolent, bored, disconnected. At least that's Gil's take. To the women in the family he is charming, intelligent, wry.

But when he disdainfully joins Gil's writing classes at the local university, Matthew's fiction shows a vivid and macabre imagination spilling onto the page. Matthew is clearly announcing his intentions to Gil, taunting him before he does something awful to his family. But why is Gil the only one who can see this? As Gil begins to follow Matthew around, his own behaviour becomes increasingly unstable. Is he losing his mind? Could it be that he is really the one his family need to fear?