'Brilliantly eerie' PETER JAMES'Engrossing and beautifully dark . . . a cracking good read' JO BRAND'A most original sleuth' THE TIMESWelcome to the River Wye: a place of poetry, historic obsession... and occult murder.Nestled deep in the Black Mountains, the village of Longtown is haunted by the double suicide of a lottery winner and his wife.A rich Londoner, unaware of the town's dark history, buys the dead man's cottage in the hopes of refurbishing it...then begins to fall victim to a host of bad luck.Luckily DS David Vaynor and Merrily Watkins - parish priest, single mum and renowned demon exorcist - are on the case.More praise for Phil Rickman'Cleverly illuminates the darkest corners of our imagination' John Connolly'The layers, the characters, the humour, the spookiness - perfect' Elly Griffiths'First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night' Daily Mail'No one writes better of the shadow-frontier between the supernatural and the real world' Bernard Cornwell

Phil Rickman was born in Lancashire and lives on the Welsh border where he writes and presents the book programme Phil the Shelf on BBC Radio Wales. He is the acclaimed author of Dr Dee, The Bones of Avalon, Midwinter Spirit (now a major ITV series), the Merrily Watkins Mysteries and the John Dee papers. Visit his website at: www.philrickman.co.uk