THE SANCTUARY by Emma Haugton

THE SANCTUARY

Emma Haughton (emmahaughton.com)

Hodder & Stoughton (hodder.co.uk)

£16.99

Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop

Zoey wakes in a strange room with no recollection of how she got here. Vague memories of a standard New York night out, clubbing with friends and then. ..nothing. Now, a strange room, in a house she’s never seen before which, it turns out, is in the middle of nowhere, in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert. When she finally finds other people, she discovers that this is The Sanctuary, a high-end addiction treatment centre that someone has paid big money for her to attend. The only catch? She has to complete the 10-week programme or cough up the cost of relocating her here and getting her home again, and face possible jail time for a crime she doesn’t remember committing. Zoey settles into the rhythm of the place and finds herself revealing more than she planned to the assorted rich misfits with whom she’s sharing The Sanctuary. But something is going on. Not everyone is being as honest as they could be. And when someone dies, Zoey knows there is more to it than meets the eye.

Emma Haughton’s debut, 2021’s excellent The Dark, proved that the author could take a group of people, isolate them from the rest of the world in one of the least hospitable places on the planet, make it tense and exciting, and keep the reader coming back for more. With The Sanctuary, she takes it one step further, and sets herself the challenge of making it even more tense and exciting than before: here are a group of people, isolated from the rest of the world (mostly) in one of the least hospitable places on the planet (though at the opposite end of the temperature scale), living in what can only be described as “the lap of luxury”. Happily, Haughton succeeds with a thriller that sucks the reader in, dropping hints that something terrible might be happening offstage before pulling the metaphorical rug from under our feet and leaving us scrambling to catch up. It proves, beyond any doubt that Haughton is the master of the modern locked-room mystery, showing that there is still life – and plenty of thrills – in the sorts of mysteries that Agatha Christie made her own around a century earlier.

Zoey is an interesting central character. She’s strong-willed but otherwise something of a flake, flitting between her home base in England, and New York, where her friends seem to live. She isn’t shy about crying poverty, but doesn’t seem to have any trouble travelling around the globe when the urge takes her. Her forced incarceration in The Sanctuary will prove to be a defining point in her life, despite how hard she fights against it in the beginning. Something from Zoey’s past is troubling her, affecting her relationships with her family – and, particularly, her twin brother – but the enforced therapy sessions soon bring her out of her shell, and her secrets out of the box where she’s been hiding them for so many years.

The other characters are an assorted bunch, some of whom click immediately with Zoey, while others – residents and staff alike – immediately rub her up the wrong way. As with The Dark, Haughton spends a lot of time examining the interpersonal relationships of these people, using them to drive much of the action. The key takeaway here is that while “first impressions last”, they don’t always give a true accounting of their subject, and it’s interesting to see how these relationships – and how Zoey perceives the other people with whom she’s sharing The Sanctuary – evolve over time, for better or worse. This is where Haughton excels and, whether we love or hate the individual characters, we become invested in them as the story progresses, seeking some form of closure in each individual arc.

The Sanctuary itself is something of a paradise, providing every luxury (except cigarettes, drugs or alcohol) that these people need to survive their ten-week visit. Cut off from the nearest town and accessible only by helicopter, Haughton manages to give it a somewhat sinister feel, a place that should be heaven on earth, but which isn’t quite, though we can’t quite put our finger on why.

A brilliant follow-up to last year’s debut, The Sanctuary proves that Haughton is here for the long run. Filled with characters that pop off the page, it’s a wonderfully-plotted slow burn that explodes into the final act. Gripping from the outset, The Sanctuary is the perfect antidote for the winter blues. Having now conquered ice and fire, we can only wait to see where Haughton plans to take us next. In the meantime find yourself a quiet spot and savour this excellent mystery.