Tangled Web UK Review November 2008
To Dream of the Dead (Merrily Watkins Mysteries) by
Philip Rickman
hbk out October 08
Published by Quercus
at £16.99
Phil Rickman has done it again! His tenth Merrily Watkins novel is as intriguing as ever, though perhaps this time there has been rather a different slant. His diffident lady priest, vicar of Ledwardine and the exorcist for the diocese of Hereford, has had no malevolent spirits to dislodge this time - instead, she has been peripherally involved in the gruesome murder of a county councillor. Much of the action revolves around her feisty daughter, Jane, who as usual becomes involved in the village politics concerning her beloved prehistoric remains.
The author has cleverly - and perhaps provocatively - based his plot upon a recent real-life controversy in Hereford which intriguingly mirrors what was written into his last two books. Jane has been campaigning against a corrupt local councillor who had been plotting to build upon Coleman’s Field, where Jane discovered some buried megalithic stones.
In the new book, by some eerie process of serendipity, Phil uses the heated dispute in Hereford over the past year or two, where the council have put a useless road over a unique four-thousand year-old ritual artefact going up Dinedor Hill, known as the Rotherwas Ribbon, or as Rickman prefers to call it, the Dinedor Serpent, the only similar Bronze Age construction being in Ohio.
One of the leading city fathers, Clement Ayling, is an opponent of the vociferous campaign to ‘Save the Serpent’ and he ends up dead, his detached head stuck in an ancient cross, his eye-sockets filled with quartz from the prehistoric pathway and his body in the River Wye. The obvious connection is made by a local Detective Inspector, Franny Bliss, and the possibility is raised that some over-keen enthusiast of ancient sites has sorted out Clement in a particularly nasty fashion. Through his characters’ dialogue, the author loses no opportunities to lambaste local government for its obdurance, corruption and contempt for democracy.
Another complication is that Franny’s boss, the ice-maiden Superintendent Annie Howe, takes the case away from him, it being well-known that her ex-copper father who had a shady past, was a fellow councillor and buddy of Clement Ayling.
Meanwhile, another topical aspect of recent Herefordshire life rears its head
in the shape of incessant rain and the cutting-off of Ledwardine by floods. The
parallel plot involving Merrily and Jane concerns the arrival of a notorious atheist
writer in the village, who gets across an even more ardent Christian fundamentalist
who is the village postmistress. As always, his books are populated with characters
who defy the reader not to believe in as real people lurking in the Welsh marches,
like rollup-smoking Gomer Parry, the JCB man.
The complex plot is handled adroitly by Phil Rickman, who as usual pulls a series of surprise rabbits out of his hat, especially the denouement, which though it does not concern the Ledwardine brigade, is highly unexpected. One is left wondering how it will be reconciled with the usual run of events in the next ‘Merrily’ - which we will all anticipate with bated breath!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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