On one given Thursday, four passenger jets crash across the globe. Tragic but seemingly unconnected, three of the four crashes have but a single survivor, a child. Against all odds the children are returned to the world, but they are different. Their difference sparks a wave of conspiracy theories and religious fundamentalism.

The Three (2014. 469 pages) is a new epistolary novel by South African writer, Sarah Lotz.

Lotz mixes elements of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) with a heavy structural slice of King’s Carrie (1974). The story purports to be the non-fictional work of one Elspeth Martins book, Black Thursday: From Crash to Conspiracy, Inside the Phenomenon of the Three. Constructed from notes, interviews, Internet chat etc. Like Carrie the book slowly builds a picture of the multiple crashes, the consequences of the aftermath and the fates of the survivors.

Lotz has a good ear for dialogue and the differing intonation which various languages impose on their native tongue speakers. Through Martins's faux investigation, Lotz's hints and teases at the answer to the childrens survival. There are those who see their survival, a sign from god, a miracle, although how they seem to ignore or justify the death of hundreds just to create the event, is down to good old human self-interest.

Others see the children as a sign of the end of days, also imposing their own agenda on events. Conspiracy theories abound as the world gets caught up with the children who return, but return somehow altered.

Now a rationalist would say that surviving a crash which kills your family is a pretty traumatic event, which may lead to post traumatic issues and personality change. But even as Lotz, as Martins, leads you through the evidence she drops enough hints that things may not be as they seem, keeping you on the edge of guessing as to the true significance of the crashes and the children, whilst all around them the world slips inextricably into another dark age.

At points this is a very disturbing book, certainly the imagery will keep you glued, but It sometimes makes for an uncomfortable read as Lotz grounds her threats and horror very much in the real world, making the book's plot both inevitable and all the more terrifying for it.

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Charles Packer