![]() ![]() ![]() This is investigated by the West Mercia police, usually in the form of Inspector Frannie Bliss. The template involves a crime – most often a murder or mysterious death. This is not to say they are formulaic in a derogatory sense. The Merrily Watkins novels have a template. She and her mentor Huw Owen know that some people experience events which cannot simply be the result of their poor mental health. ![]() This, of course, puts Merrily Watkins’ ‘night job’ under threat. The senior Anglican clergy, including the Bishop of Hereford, are relentlessly determined to be woker than woke, and have decided that exorcism – or, to use the other term, deliverance – is the stuff or the middle ages, and clergy are being advised to refer any strange events to the NHS mental health teams. ![]() Now, as another celebrated solver of mysteries once said, “The game’s afoot!” We are in relatively modern times, March 2020, and the Covid Curse has begun to cast its awful spell. His many fans will join me in hoping that he is on the mend, and at last we have a new book! Old Ledwardine hands won’t need reminding, but for newcomers this graphic may be helpful. It seems like half a lifetime since there was a Merrily Watkins novel – it was All of a Winter’s Night back in 2017 (click the title to read my review) and there has been one hell of a lot of water under the bridge for all of us since then including, sadly, Phil Rickman suffering serious illness. ![]()
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