Cham

The Beach on ice: deep powder, dead poets and moral free-fall in the death-sport capital of the world. Long-dead Lord Byron started it. He was the rock star of his age, but also a poet with about as much relevance to the blood grudge struggle that marks modern life for most of humanity as he has to the practice of sliding down snowy slopes on planks of wood. And yet, it was thanks to Byron that Itchy ended up living in Chamonix Mont Blanc, the death-sport capital of the world, among the high mountains and low morals. In the intervening years, he has tried hard with alcohol and adrenaline to numb a past he can't atone for. Now a serial rapist is stalking Cham's tourist-thronged streets, haunting the same shadows as Itchy and triggering an obsession which will lead him far from Europe's zenith, to the depths of the valley and himself. This is a striking evocation of a world where the reckless violence of a callow man's life comes back to haunt him. This work is presented by the author of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize-winner "Boy A". It is exhilarating and action-packed, with all the psychological acuity of "Boy A". It provides widespread review coverage in men's magazines and national press. 'The first time Itchy came here even the road up was like a call to arms. It's raised on great soaring stone pillars, which look like they were looted from the Titans, but it feels as if it was made before even those pregods. As if it surged from the centre of the earth with the same unfathomable energy that forced up the crag-ragged ridges on either side. Chamonix is indeed a mythical place, a mystical place: where civilisation confronted the wilderness and for once they agreed to differ; undefeated; the undisputed free-ride capital; the death-sport centre of the world. All of the first mountains ever assailed were climbed from here. The history of Alpinism itself is a history of Cham. Chamonix is where it all began.'