The spirit of Edward Elgar, Britain's greatest ecclesiastical
composer, haunts the byroads of the village of Wychehill.In his
latest, Jane, the 17-year-old daughter of Merrily Watkins,
Deliverance Consultant for the Church of England, is about to be
expelled from school for upsetting the local councilmen who wish to
bulldoze Coleman Meadow and erect 24 luxury estate houses on the
site. Jane believes the hillside represents a worship area that
harks back to the Druids and should be left intact. Complicating
matters, Merrily has been called in by the local vicar, Syd Spicer,
ex-SAS, to conduct an exorcism of the bicycle-pedaling ghost of Sir
Edward Elgar, whose sightings have caused numerous accidents along
the road. Meanwhile, Tim Loste, a local choirmaster obsessed with
Elgar and goaded by a hippie-dippie occult writer, not only seems
determined to recreate a Perpetual Choir that will restore balance
and harmony to the earth, but may have sliced and diced a drug
dealer working near an ancient sacrificial stone. Merrily's
musician lover Lol provides help in analyzing Elgar's music and
entree to anthropologist Alfred Watkins (no relation) and horror
writer Algernon Blackwood; Jane relies on a crusty septuagenarian
for aid.Rickman (The Smile of a Ghost, 2005, etc.) is equally
enamored of historical scholarship, ectoplasmic sleight-of-hand and
village rumor-mongering. Readers will be left with an urge to
wander the English countryside while whistling Elgar's tunes. Be
advised, however, that the dark doings unfold at a stately pace.
(Kirkus Reviews)
NOW A MAJOR ITV DRAMA Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum
and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for
the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to
a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill.
Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash
that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has
injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city
nightlife... and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered
below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police
ask: is it a ritual killing, a gangland disposal or a cry of
outrage? As Merrily and the police follow separate paths towards
the truth, Merrily's teenage daughter, Jane, faces the consequences
of her own obsession with a possibly prehistoric site in their home
village of Ledwardine. Until, on a night of frenzied violence, in a
place at the centre of an ancient, universal mystery, the final,
shocking connections are made.
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