Phil Rickman at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 05/02/2008

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Phil Rickman - Page 1

The Fabric of Sin

The Remains of an Altar

The Smile of a Ghost

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

The Lamp of the Wicked

Whose Hound is it Anyway?

WebPage: http://www.philrickman.co.uk

About the Author (Photo (c) Keith Lewis)

Bibliography

First British Edition Quercus (2007)

The Fabric of Sin

`We must have offended somebody or something at Garway ... Next time we shall know better.’

Garway church was built by medieval Knights Templar, whose stone coffin lids can be seen in its altar steps and window sills. After seven centuries, the Welsh Border village is still shadowed by their mysteries.
A few fields away, the Master House, abandoned and falling into ruin, has been sold to the Duchy of Cornwall, the private estate which provides an income for the Prince of Wales. But renovation plans stall when a specialist builder refuses to work there, insisting it’s a place that doesn’t want to be restored.
Directed by the Bishop of Hereford to investigate, deliverance consultant Merrily Watkins is unconvinced, wary of being used, suspicious of the people she’s supposed to be helping.
But violent death changes everything, and Merrily uncovers hidden layers of sin and retribution in a secretive landscape where local inns have astrological names and a feud between two local families has its roots in medieval history. And what did happen in Garway to intimidate even the great Edwardian ghost-story writer M. R. James?
Warned off when her inquiries stumble into forbidden areas, uncovering modern-day Masonic links, Merrily has no option but to conceal a major crime as she goes back to Garway to find fibres of fear stitched into history and insidiously twisted in the corridors - and the cloisters - of power.
`Compassionate, original and sharply contemporary, Rickman’s crime series is one of the best around.’ Spectator
`Merrily, a fully-drawn heroine and fascinating personality in her own right, acts as the reader’s conduit into this slightly askew world where even exorcists are sceptics and work alongside police, psychiatrists and lawyers. Add a finely sketched portrayal of provincial England and you get a first class thriller with a difference.’ Guardian
`First rate. A passionate, flawed modern woman, every bit as concerned with the intricacies of crime as with demons that go bump in the night. We don’t praise our home-grown thriller writers enough. It’s high time we praised Phil Rickman.’ Daily Mail
‘Rickman’s strengths, an acute ear for dialogue and a talent for wickedly accurate character cameos, draw one into a story where human frailties and strengths are counterposed. The clever combination of modern idiom and the timeless echo of history leaps from every page. You are there with poor Merrily every step of the way.’ Daily Express

First British Edition Quercus (2006)

The Remains of an Altar
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 village of Wychehill.
Wychehill owes its origins to a quarry-owner’s guilt. As a community, it doesn’t hang together: no village shop, no cosy pub. Just a church that was always too big and people who move in for the views . . . and Elgar. The music of England’s greatest composer washes through the Malverns like their hidden springs. In Wychehill, an obsession has grown around Elgar and The Dream of Gerontius, his evocation of the afterlife with angels and demons.
Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is linked to a revamped nearby 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 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 mystery, the final, shocking connections are made.
'A first class thriller with a difference' Guardian
`As if an episode of The Vicar of Dibley or The Archers had suddenly turned into Cracker’ Sunday Times
`First rate. A passionate, flawed modern woman, every hit as concerned with the intricacies of crime as with demons that go bump in the night’ Daily Mail
`The Merrily Watkins books are easily the most interesting being written in Britain today’ Tangled Web
`A highly sophisticated crime novel. Its complex narrative grips like a clamp. Rickman makes us care about his characters and is brilliant at dialogue’ Crimetime

Paperback - Pan (2006)

First British Edition Macmillan (2005)

The Smile of a Ghost
The border town of Ludlow has it all: exquisite medieval streets, an imposing ruined castle, a parish church the size of a cathedral and a weight of history and legend.
Wealthy people, famous people, have come to Ludlow to live. A sad teenage boy comes here to die ... dramatically, at sunset, in a fall from the ruins. Accident or suicide? Either way, no great mystery. Or is there?
Robbie Walsh was the nephew of former Detective Sergeant Andy Mumford, newly - and reluctantly - retired from West Mercia CID. When Mumford’s ailing mother becomes convinced she’s still seeing her dead grandson in the old town, the ex-policeman brings in Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance consultant to the diocese of Hereford. Is his mother’s problem dementia, delusion or something even more disturbing?
It’s already a difficult time for Merrily, now having to work with a new diocesan Deliverance advisory panel headed by an ambitious priest and a sceptical psychiatrist. When, after two more deaths, she is drawn towards the peculiar lifestyle of the onetime Gothic rock singer Belladonna, Merrily is compelled, for the first time, to work undercover ... discovering that below the surrounding beauty lie layers of alienation and despair, while the shadowy medieval streets nurture a noxious obsession with the nature of death and the afterlife.
Both scepticism and the dark underside of belief threaten Phil Rickman’s engagingly open-minded heroine in the seventh in this hauntingly unique mystery series.
Praise for The Prayer Of The Night Shepherd
`The dark no-man’s-land where murder mingles with superstition, genetics and the twisted conditioning of unhappy families. Settings and characters are pitch-perfect. Complex, absorbing, fascinating’ Andrew Taylor, author of The American Boy
`First rate. As the series has unfolded, so Merrily has become an ever more engaging protagonist. We don’t praise our home-grown thriller writers enough: it’s high time we praised Phil Rickman’ Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail
`Welsh superstitions, Church of England conundrums and true-crime touchstones. A thinking reader’s Elizabeth George’ Kirkus Reviews, USA
`His handling of dialogue is unmatchable and it is impossible to believe his characters don’t exist. I read The Prayer in strictly rationed instalments to make the enjoyment last longer’ Prof. Bernard Knight, Tangled Web
`If this book was a bottle of wine it would be vintage champagne - exquisitely chilled and intoxicating. Proper, grown-up meditations on matters spiritual and criminal. His characters leap off the page and follow you around when you’ve stopped reading’ John Whitbourn, SPX
`Scary, spiritual ... a plot laced with intrigue and colourful characters. (Merrily) is gathering fans at an accelerating rate’ Tony Heath, Tribune

First British Edition Macmillan (2004)

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd
See Review by Bernard Knight - Author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series set in Medieval Devon
In a Victorian mansion turned hotel on the Welsh border, Ben Foley, a redundant TV drama producer, hosts unprofitable murder-mystery weekends and feeds his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskerville ..
Local tradition argues that the origins of The Hound lie not on Dartmoor but in the Herefordshire legend of a black dog foreshadowing death in the Vaughan family. Young Jane Watkins, whose first weekend job is at the Stanner Hall Hotel, is intrigued. But Jane’s mother, Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy when she learns how Ben Foley proposes to try to prove his theory.
As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley’s dabbling uncovers more than he can handle. For the history of Stanner Hall is linked not only to the Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the legacy of a medieval exorcism but with a chain of murders that is far from fictional.
Merrily Watkins, already dragged into the treacherous mire of spiritual healing, must now consider the possibility of inherited evil and the nature and validity of a lingering family curse.
The Prayer of the Night Shepherd is about sexual obsession, spiritual trickery and blood-betrayal. And, muffled under a shroud of snow ... the dark side of the border.
Acclaim For The Merrily Watkins Series
'A cracking mystery - characters drawn with such realism that they step out of the pages and perform for you in your mind's eye' Professor Bernard Knight, Tangled Web
‘The book that will mark his final, well-deserved breakthrough into the very first rank of thriller writers’ Daily Mail
`A highly sophisticated crime novel. Its complex narrative grips like a clamp. Rickman makes us care about his characters . . . is brilliant at dialogue. As no other novelist does, he deals with an area where belief and religion intersect with crime and justice. Let's just hope the television series is half as good as the books’ Andrew Taylor, Crimetime
'Subtle… chilling… The underlying themes of change, conflict, hidden worlds and inexplicable evil are a reminder that good fiction based on unsettling ideas can be as illuminating as any number of earnest documentaries' Sunday Mercury
'Monumentally ambitious… Merrily links criminal, psychological, moral, sociological, spiritual, and supernatural realms to dig deeper into evil-doing just when most fictional sleuths would be calling it quits' Kirkus Reviews
`Does the supernatural stuff with elan and builds around his heroine a rich hinterland of politicking clerics and mother-daughter growing pains’ Guardian
‘Rickman has virtually created a new genre, combining crime with nicely judged supernatural elements. Highly entertaining stuff, delivered with a panache we have come to expect.’ Publishing News
‘Rickman writes mysteries in the classic sense, cleverly combining the supernatural and criminal elements to illuminate the darkest corners of our imaginations.’ John Connolly
`Immensely effective. Watkins has become ever more engaging’ Daily Mail
`Wonderful ... enthralling. An acute ear for dialogue and a talent for wickedly accurate character cameos. Huge tensions. You are there with Merrily every step of the way’ Daily Express
‘Rickman has virtually created a new genre, combining crime with nicely judged supernatural elements. Highly entertaining stuff, delivered with a panache we have come to expect’ Publishing News
`Subtle ... chilling ... a reminder that good fiction based on unsettling ideas can be as illuminating as any number of earnest documentaries’ Sunday Mercury
`Compelling ... sinister ... characters drawn with such realism that they step out of the pages and perform for you in your mind’s eye’ Prof. Bernard Knight, Tangled Web

Paperback - Pan (2003)

First British Edition Macmillan (2003)

The Lamp of the Wicked
Overshadowed by high-voltage power lines, the unlovely village of Underhowle is on the brink of a new prosperity after half a century of decay. But the community is also home to a man the police have identified as the killer of several young women.
Had it not been for the Revd Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, and her gravedigger, Gomer Parry, the truth might never have emerged.
But is it the whole truth? As the police search for more bodies, Merrily worries that the detective in charge might have become blinkered by personal ambition. And when, after the horrific climax to a very public confession, she is asked to conduct a controversial funeral, she becomes exposed to hidden tensions in Underhowle, as volatile as the 400,000 volts passing overhead. For is there really a connection with the most sickening series of murders recorded in Britain in the past century?
Meanwhile, in her home parish of Ledwardine, Merrily has more intimate problems: the need for discretion over her new relationship with the musician Lol Robinson; and the alleged angelic visitations on which even her usually impressionable daughter heaps scorn.
Battling his own demons to face an audience for the first time in nearly twenty years, Lol follows an unexpected path into the mind of the confessed murderer - while Merrily tries to quell her own revulsion in an effort to scrub away the psychic stain left by a dead monster.
This fifth – and most devastating – Merrily Watkins mystery takes Phil Rickman’s endearingly fallible heroine from the wilder shores of millennial spirituality to the darkest hinterland of human depravity. The Lamp of the Wicked is disturbing, resonant and quite literally electrifying.

About The Author
Phil Rickman was born in Lancashire. He has won awards for his TV and radio journalism, and his highly acclaimed earlier novels are Candlenight, Crybbe, The Man in the Moss, December, The Chalice and The Wine of Angels. He is married and lives on the Welsh Border.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

The Fabric of Sin (Quercus, 2007)

The Remains of an Altar (Quercus, 2006) (Merrily Watkins)

The Smile of a Ghost (Macmillan, 2005) Pan Pbk Jun 06 (Merrily Watkins)

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (Macmillan, 2004)

The Lamp of the Wicked (Macmillan, 2003) Pan Pbk Oct 03 (Merrily Watkins)

The Cure of Souls (Macmillan, 2001) Pan Pbk Nov 02 (Merrily Watkins)

A Crown of Lights (Macmillan, 2000) Pan Pbk Oct 03 (Merrily Watkins)

Midwinter of the Spirit (Macmillan, 1999) Pan Pbk Oct 03 (Merrily Watkins)

The Wine of Angels (Macmillan, 1998) Pan Pbk Oct 03 (Merrily Watkins)

The Chalice

December

The Man in the Moss

Crybbe

Candlenight