This stays with you; an eccentric wonder about a disaffected, dying man, living in an abandoned insane asylum and various sinister, satellite characters; it's one of the most lyrical, gorgeously descriptive English novels of recent years - bafflingly ignored by prize judges

There can be no doubting the remarkable scope of this writer’s imagination, nor the skill of his prose. He has a genius for atmosphere... If Charles Dickens is one influence, Breaking Bad is surely another

A gripping exploration of mental illness… A compelling update of a Gothic novel… The real pleasure of this book is Mr Scudamore’s masterly and unflinching prose

A quietly remarkable novel that resonates with universality

Wreaking itself is drawn brilliantly with both precise and pungent descriptions… The descriptions of teenage boredom by the sea and adult ennui in the city are stingingly realised… Sharply hewn, inventively structured and unnervingly written

A self-conscious and self-reflexive novel. It is the building itself that looms largest… And though, like Thornfield and Manderley, we find Wreaking broken by time, weather and debt, it commands our attention

A creepy chronicle of abuse, abandonment and unrequited love… So much here is brilliant

Everything we most want to know, the author quietly looks away from, until the story becomes as layered, contorted and interrupted as the collapsing architecture of Wreaking itself. Then time straightens out and speeds up suddenly… Everything connects. Everything comes to light. Everything is revealed, yet somehow the buckling of time induced by subjectivity, madness and metaphor makes it all just as hard to see

The question of what constitutes madness... is intelligently explored. Bold, grotesque, bawdy...memorable

Relentlessly inventive

Intensely imagined

Settings don’t come much more Gothic than Wreaking, the derelict, decaying...psychiatric hospital of James Scudamore’s striking third novel

This is the work of a writer totally at ease with, and confident in, his powers. A wonderfully assured novel with scope and ambition and with enough of a mystery at its heart to keep the reader hooked till the end

We are left with the characters in our heads for days, and the sense of unease that Scudamore cleverly conjures up

A twisted, unsettling tale of family lies and lonely souls

An immersion in the physical and psychic ruins of a contemporary Britain which enchants and disturbs, lures and repels. The inner poetry and descriptive mastery of James Scudamore's Wreaking are riches which cannot be forgotten. If you only read one novel in coming times, make it this astonishing and deeply moving chronicle

This is an impressive work from the critically acclaimed author of Heliopolis

A page-turning, gripping debut novel ... sharply observed, well-drawn characters and pitch perfect writing.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Not only an enthralling murder investigation... but a plot that is strengthened and illuminated by two of the best characters I have read for some time- reporter Sully Carter and his cohort, the streetwise gangster Sly Hastings... their exchanges are pure gold.

This is a terrific first novel by a man with a long career in journalism. The tale builds to a dramatic conclusion, with a final unexpected and terrible twist in the tail.