The Fever of the World: Merrily Watkins is back, in this chilling and transfixing mystery (Merrily Watkins Series Book 16)

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But Watkins’ arrival coincided with the manifestation of a local dispute. A family was hell-bent on reviving an ancient festival, one that had attracted fervent support and opposition. I liked how the story started to develop abit more, and the different threads of history, folklore, magic, spirituality, social realities... Of the three episodes, the first part was definitely the best, very dark obviously, but well structured, the second was excellent, and the third still good, but a little off the first two. Women are disappearing from the area and there is a cowboy drainage contractor around. When those two facts come together and a body is discovered under a newly installed drainage system the police think they have an open and shut case but things aren’t as simple as they first seem to be. Phil’s Merrily series is being produced into a TV series thanks to a partnership between ITV and SKY. This series has a total of 12 books which will all be produced if the first pilot project goes well. The Wine of Angels, the first book in the series, is about a single mother who is a parish priest in the late thirties. The priestess is strict about what she wants done and not to be done. She walks into a dispute over a play about the seventeenth-century where a clergy is accused of witchcraft which leads her to trouble.

There are dangers in this kind of work, Merrily,” warns Huw ( David Threlfall), the sexist deliverance tutor. “Not just dangers in the mind and the soul, but dangers in the dregs of humanity who attach themselves to the flipside of what we believe in, little rat eyes in the dark waiting to infect you.” I often felt as if I was reading a combination of Henry James and Jane Austen (neither of whom I enjoy), but if you do you might enjoy this book. This series follows country vicar Merrily Watkins, who is one of the few women priests working as an exorcist in the UK. She is being mentored in the art of exorcism by clergyman Huw Owen, despite warnings from Canon Dobbs. When a grisly murder takes place in her local area, the police come calling for her assistance. [2] Cast [ edit ]Watkins’ gender elicits many a problem. There are those in the community who are not convinced that a female vicar is the right way to go. Their sensibilities are further challenged when Watkins is assigned the role of exorcist. This is the darkest of this series yet. It's about the aftermath, or maybe you'd say fallout, of a real-life English serial killer of the 1990's, Fred West. It’s a good book, notwithstanding some nonsense about people being allergic to electricity, but I'd have been content to go my whole life without knowing anything about West, serial killers not being one of my favorite topics to read about. Fictional ones are bad enough; this novel sometimes felt too much like a true crime book.

His first novels, Candlenight and Curfew/Crybbe were successful on both sides of the Atlantic. and drew him comparisons with Stephen King. The books would be described as ‘something new and creepy.’ Phil wrote a number of horror books before turning to crime and mystery; his early love from childhood. This small town looks very peaceful and almost boring at first, but Merrily soon discovers that it has a history of horrific unsolved murders, pagan rituals and superstitions. With the help of psychologists, new found friends and the town’s police department, Merrily is able to solve some of the problems that plague this little Gothic town. Her daughter, Jane, wasn’t too fond of the notion of having a vicar for a mother. But the heroine was certain that they would find some middle ground along which they could engage one another.I quite liked the first movement, actually. It's in no hurry, and the satisfactions are the satisfactions of a skilled author handling a formula. I knew what to expect, and I was also surprised. People who think the books start slowly perhaps are not fully appreciating all the elements of the formula. A good copy editor may have helped this book. There is SO much telling not showing. Much of the stuff about Wordsworth covers the same things multiple times. An editor should have caught that. Phil managed to do this when he wrote a documentary “Aliens” which he produced for Radio Wales and British Broadcasting Radio 4. The documentary was about the rise of English people who were moving to Wales because of the draw of cheap land in Wales, but the new residents did not receive warm welcome from the Wales native. This documentary went on to win him the Wales Current Event Affair Reporter of the Year award in 1987. There are twelve other Merrily novels after this one. By the conclusion of this one, I can see her being one of the fixtures here, whilst I sit with a warming drink (perhaps mulled cider!) near to the fire, but also glancing into those shadows in the corner – just in case... If you're going to make such a HUGE thing about Wordsworth, then the actual plot resolution should have something to do with him. It didn't.