The One

'This was a day Jools never expected to see. The pills hadn't worked.' Jools is a man under attack - from within: 'He could sense another's proximity in the pitch darkness of the bedroom.

It moved towards Jools, who was trembling like a child, then it started to enter his body.

He let out a scream as the head of the dark shape squeezed into his.' Jools does his best to fight back, and this is the story of his struggle with a succession of characters who are invading his mind.

They order him to leave his home on a housing scheme in his beloved Muirhouse and walk the streets of Edinburgh.

Like it or not, Jools finds his act being cleaned up by the powers that be, and they want him to clean up the city too.

But he ends up committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he faces the ultimate challenge - to achieve the state known as the One: '"When am Ah gettin oot?" Jools asked. "When you can do the One for twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours without a thoughtwave..." "But Ah'll never dae it!" Jools moaned.' "The One" is a first novel of rare power and originality. It takes the reader to a place that has never been documented in this way before - inside the mind of someone suffering the torments of schizophrenia.

Written with a sure grasp of the Edinburgh vernacular and a merciful leavening of black humour, it grips like a thriller from beginning to end.