Millwood is a haunting work of literary suspense set in South Africa, weaving together generational trauma, unresolved murder, and a legacy of alcoholism through the lens of one man’s reckoning with his past.

When Tom discovers the decomposing body of his cousin Kevin in a Johannesburg suburb, a chain of guilt, memory, and suspicion is set in motion. Kevin had lived a dishevelled, hermetic life. When Tom begins to clear out his house, he uncovers a secret world of restored vintage motorcycles, hidden wealth, and a past far more complex than anyone suspected.

The police, disorganised and hostile, begin circling Tom as their chief suspect. When he hires a private investigator, he hopes for resolution. Instead is pulled deeper into a mystery that spans three generations. As the investigation stalls, and the weight of guilt presses down, Tom begins to unravel. Alcohol becomes both refuge and curse, echoing the same disease that consumed other men in his family.

The story shifts between past and present, revealing a lineage scarred by violence and secrecy. In 1873, Tom’s great-grandfather Charles Osborne accidentally killed a young assistant while prospecting for gold near Knysna. The cover-up, witnessed by the victim’s brother, led to a curse placed by a local diviner, one that would haunt three generations of Osborne sons.

The curse, often appearing as a spectral hyena, stalks the story’s edges. Charles’s only son Cedric, abused as a boy, grows into a haunted man, silent, watchful, and unknowingly complicit in furthering the curse. As Tom begins to see the repeating patterns of secrecy, alcoholism, and grief, he realizes he may be the curse’s final victim… or its breaker.

A mysterious grey van, letters from World War II, and the sudden reappearance of an estranged family friend deepens the novel’s suspense. At its heart, however, Millwood is not about a murder, it is about memory, masculinity, and redemption. Tom must reckon not only with the mystery of Kevin’s death, but with the ghosts of a family that never healed.

In the novel’s final chapters, Tom’s drinking spirals out of control, leading to a violent outburst that almost ends his marriage. It is this collapse, not the investigation, that becomes the real turning point. Forced to confront the disease that has stalked his family, Tom begins the slow process of recovery.

The novel closes with a revelation, a long-forgotten letter from the Knysna diviner, misinterpreted for over a century, reveals that the curse was never a punishment, but a protection. The hyena, far from being a harbinger of doom, had been watching over them all along.

Lyrical, layered, and unflinching, Millwood explores the way history haunts us, the myths we inherit, and the fragile hope of breaking free.