The Man on the Endless Stair, the “compelling, dark and complex” (Rachel Wolf) debut novel by Chris Barkley, has been featured in a Times list of the ‘best crime fiction of 2025’.

Times book critic Mark Sanderson praised Chris’s ingenuity and willingness to shirk off convention, writing:

“Chris Barkley delights in playing games—and fast and loose with the conventions of crime fiction.”

Subscribers can read the full review here.

When troubled but talented young author Euan meets decorated novelist Malcolm Furnivall, he feels his luck has finally changed. Malcolm takes Euan as a protégé, inviting him to spend time on his secluded island in the Hebrides, nurturing his skills, and vouching for him in the rarefied literary scene of the 1950s.

But lately, Malcolm has not been himself. He cuts an increasingly isolated figure, consumed by his work, and has become convinced that something strange and terrible will befall him. Sensing the end, he summons his loved ones and—to everyone’s surprise—entrusts Euan with the task of completing his masterpiece.

Malcom’s suspicions soon prove well-founded; he is discovered brutally murdered in his study, and his invaluable unfinished novel has vanished. Cut off from the mainland, with the killer on the loose and the island’s inhabitants circling, Euan feels both his mentor’s legacy and his only chance at greatness slipping away—he must venture deep into Malcolm’s labyrinthine mansion to find the manuscript before it falls into the wrong hands.

But what he doesn’t yet know is that the closer he comes to solving the mystery, the tighter he will bind himself to a fate sealed in time…

You can pre-order your copy here and here, or, better, via your local bookshop and Bookshop.org.

Follow Chris on Twitter @TufferBarkley and on Instagram @tufferbarkley.