Three Hours is set a school in rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard. The morning lessons have just begun when a gunman begins shooting and badly wounds the headmaster and the school is put on lock down.  

This story is told from the point of view of the people at the heart of the siege. The characters range from the wounded headmaster bleeding from a head wound in the library and unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to teenage Hannah desperate to help her headmaster and find a way to save her first love.

The parents gather nearby desperate for news that their children are safe, while 16-year-old Syrian refugee Rafi who has escaped to the UK from Aleppo with his little brother, another pupil at the school. The brothers had assumed that now they were living in England that they were safe from terror they had left behind. Rafi is determined to find his brother hiding somewhere in the snow-covered school grounds, but will he be able to make it before the mysterious gunman is identified by the police psychologist and captured?

Some of the children are taking part in dress rehearsals for their production of Macbeth and to keep them from panicking their teacher insists that they continue rehearsing in the safety of the theatre during the intense hours where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption.

Three Hours is a clever, fast-paced roller coaster ride of emotions it is terrifying, exhilarating and exceptionally good! Thanks to the Penguin Books (UK), Viking and Netgalley for an arc copy of Three Hours in return for an honest review.