Furnace

Josh Spiller is a long distance truck driver whose girlfriend is pregnant but has just told him she's not keeping their baby. After a furious argument, Josh heads out on the road and drives non-stop for 36 hours. In desperate need of a break, he pulls off the highway into the small mountain-town of Furnace. Looking for somewhere to park and rest, he instead finds tragedy when a prominent local politician pushes a pram directly under Josh's truck. Everyone in Furnace believes the baby's death is an accident and nobody can accept that Councillor Nelly McFarlane could be responsible for such a heinous crime. Even Josh begins to doubt what he saw... until he eventually leaves Furnace only to discover something scary is following him.

I think it was Pip who recommended this novel to me, knowing we both share a great love of Stephen King. This is one of the best non-King Kings I've read: gripping, inventive, surprising and packed full of well-researched detail into the life of a long-haul trucker stateside. Not at all what I'd have expected from intellectual TV presenter / former Scottish punk singer Muriel Gray. While it's not quite up there with the master at his best, it's easily the equal of many of his recent works and a damn sight more entertaining than Dreamcatcher.

Although the pedant in me would have expected those American truckers to be transporting aluminum, rather than aluminium...