The Tunnels

Sam Samuel is in trouble.

After a visit to his local supermarket takes an unexpected turn, he’s press ganged into a treasure hunt in a set of supernatural tunnels, and now he doesn’t know who to trust.

His bickering team mates clearly hate each other. A grumbling minotaur and two thuggish heavies are obviously up to no good. His new best friend Takara has a fluid relationship with the truth. The Duke, The Inspector, The Mighty Malphas and a gang of androids with a dangerously sweet tooth aren’t making things any easier. And reality itself – which seems to have given up on the basics – isn’t being an enormous help either.

The Tunnels is a suburban science fantasy ghost story featuring robots, magicians, avenging clowns, spectral staircases, occult boot fairs, ancient scrolls, chilling incantations and tables that defy the laws of normality, alongside lashings of banoffee pie, gypsy tart, seditionary cupcakes, cider brewed by an anarchist collective, mind-blowing curry and discount egg-slicers. It is both a doomed love story and a hymn to community, with just a tiny bit of revolution stirred in for good measure.

The Tunnels is the debut novel by English arts journalist Ian Watson.