Take shelter from festive excesses with a good, creepy book

There are plenty of cosy titles to choose from in the lull between Christmas and the new year, but a Chandleresque thriller in London’s underworld is the pick of the creepy ones

In the strange and soporific lull between Christmas and the new year, you either want (books-wise) cosy or creepy. Cosy is more easily dealt with. I favour High Rising by Angela Thirkell, Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford, anything at all by Barbara Pym, or perhaps some classic crime: Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon (one of the British Library’s cleverly exhumed collection of “lost” detective stories); Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan (which has been newly republished by Vintage).

Creepy is trickier, though the ghost stories of MR James are always a safe bet. But I’ve an even better idea. I think the book you may be looking for is Deep Shelter by Oliver Harris (Vintage). OK, so this one begins on the uplands of London’s Belsize Park on a sweltering June afternoon. But no matter: it might as well be midwinter. All the important action takes place underground in the tunnels and bunkers that were built far beneath London – below the tube tracks, in some cases – during the second world war.

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