A lingeringly strange atmosphere hangs about Benjamin Wood’s third novel, in which the settings and paraphernalia of a new wave of British weird fiction — old children’s TV series, rustic bloodletting, the starkness of the northern landscape — encroach steadily on a retrospective story of childhood murder and deceit.

The setting is northern England in the early 1990s, as the young Daniel Hardesty, a bookish 12-year-old, embarks on a road trip to Yorkshire with his estranged dad Francis, a jobbing stage carpenter, philanderer and liar.