The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Anyone who has never read the haunting, facinating, imaginative and meticulously researched novels of British West Country author Phil Rickman is in for an enormous treat. Set in a decrepit but captivating old hotel with a dark history on the Welsh/English border, and taking place over the Christmas holiday season of snow and ice and wuthering winds, the story deals with modern murder and ancient devilry, from a mysterious, beautiful woman with a violent past living under an alias, to a machiavellian medaeval lord who haunts a local, historic church alternately in the form of a bull or a smouldering black hellhound, to a sexually predatory Victorian dominatrix with a passion for fox hunting and youthful male conquests, and a documentary film maker with a group of scholars who are convinced that Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic Hound of the Baskervilles was conceived not in Devon, but in this part of the world, all make up a twisting, anxiety-producing tale full of suspense and surprises that leaves the reader with as many provocative querries as answers--and makes you want more of Rickman's riveting yarns, and with his enduring Merrily Watkins series, as well as his other, uniquely connected novels, you won't be disappointed!

This sixth in Rickman's Merrily Watkins series picks up after several of the more dramatic volumes in the series and finds the diocesian exorcist and minister of Ledwardine confronting a thorny problem. Merrily has started having informal evensong services and unexpectedly, one of the attendees is cured of a fatal tumor. Merrily isn't ready to accept this sudden sign of the Lord's blessing at face value, but her congregation does. Now she must deal with her and the church's mixed attitude toward healing. Which, she discovers, many think goes hand in hand with exorcism. The other piece of good/bad news is that Jane, Merrily's daughter and chief critic, has managed to get a weekend job as waitress and general assistant at a struggling new inn that is trying to use its tenuous connection to Arthur Conan Doyle and the hound of the Baskervilles to build a clientele. All of this on the forbidding border with Wales where, as we are often reminded, long memories and getting even is a way of life. The legends of the area include a number of characters almost as grim as their remaining heirs. Throw in mysterious black dogs and bulls, a fair amount of inherited insanity, séances, and film crews and you have the perfect environment for trouble. As usual, Jane's youthful enthusiasm leads her into the worst of the fray. Merrily must cope with healing, spiritism, a terminally determined daughter and her blossoming relationship with Lol. Compelled by her nature she is soon in the thick of things, trying to deal with phenomena that are unresponsive to either intellect or faith. The result is a complex story that is part history, part supernatural, and part psychological thriller. Rickman is one of the few writers who seem to be able to bring the supernatural into a mystery story without destroying the overall effect. For all the darkness of the themes, The Prayer of the Night Shepherd is much lighter in tone than the past few volumes. Not for lack of horrible events but because Jane's self confidence and Lol's gentle wisdom balance Merrily's introspectiveness perfectly. The inner story that develops around them keeps some of the dark insanity around them at bay. I found myself enjoying the break, as well as all the bits of Sherlockiana and bleak border history. For all that this is volume 7, it stands pretty well on its own. I've managed to read this series completely out of order and don't feel I missed anything but an occasional bit of context.

Stories of phantom black dogs abound in Britain. Almost every county has its own variant, from the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Bogey Beast of Yorkshire. In this novel, the ghost hound of Herefordshire on the Welsh border foreshadows a death in the Vaughan family. The family is also cursed with an ancestor named Black Vaughan, who is believed by the author to be the basis for the hellish Hugo of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Did Sir Arthur really take his tale of the phosphorescent Hound from the Welsh Border rather than foggy Dartmoor? According to an article in the 06/01/04 "Telegraph," Rickman's theory on the origins of 'The Hound' is about to appear in the magazine "Sherlock." Evidently this author discovered that Herefordshire had a population of medieval Baskervilles, not to mention Mortimers and Stapletons, and many local people still refuse to walk near Black Vaughan's home of Hergest Croft at night for fear of seeing his ghost and that of his hound. Sherlock Holmes fans might want to read this book just to ferret out Rickman's research on Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous dog story. Since "The Prayer of the Night Shepherd" is also a Merrily Watkins procedural, many familiar characters appear from Rickman's previous novels. Merrily, Vicar of Ledwardine and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford reluctantly takes on a new role as a healer of physical ailments. Gomer Parry, the manic digger-for-hire who is one of my favorite Rickman creations, has a minor walk-on. Merrily's daughter Jane is as usual, in the thick of the supernatural goings-on at Stanner Hall. Poor Lol, the musician is still trying to spend quality time with Merrily, but is thwarted by a snowstorm, a couple of attempted murders, an attempted suicide, and a real murder--not to mention a phantom hound. This book is an unsettling mix of murder mystery, indigestible lumps of Rickman's 'Hound' research, and swirls of supernatural vapor. What really happened to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when or if he visited Herefordshire? What did Jane really experience in the tower room under the witch's hat at Stanner Hall? What did the medium from the White Company really see? I was left scratching my head over this latest installment of Merrily Watkins's venture into the dim, dangerous netherworld of Anglican theology.

Rickman's sixth Merrily Watkins is a huge improvement over the past couple of efforts. With its snowbound denoument it redraws the Rickman reader back into a chilling novel that makes reading this novel at night not something to do easily. Rickman, over the last few novels - essentially the Merrily series - has moved from supernatural to crime thrillers with a supernatural edge and whilst he is making a grand attempt at creating what might be a new genre, it's not quite as good as his purer supernatural efforts. In this latest, Jane has a greater starring role as she moves into womanhood - to Merrily's reluctance - by taking a weekend job up at Stanner Hall near Kington. Jane is working as a kitchen maid for Ben Foley and his wife, Amber (who is acting as the chef) who have resurrected Stanner Hall as a hotel. Dead keen to get the place established Ben is eager to prove the link that the plotline for the Conan Doyle story, Hound of the Baskervilles, was actually based on events initiated by the Chancer family several centuries back and not based on Devonshire links. Inevitably the theory is holding no water with the firmly established Baker League, but is with the White, a spiritual group keen to adhere to the spiritualism that dominates much of Doyle's later life. Two plots lines run (though they must inevitably merge) - the first that of Stanner Hall and the local magistrate, Sebastian Dacre JP. The latter has hired some locals to hunt down a huge black dog he feels is savaging his flock which has its home on the farm of Jeremy Berrows (whose girlfriend, Natalie is also the Stanner Hall hotel manager). This enables our ever-friendly Gomer Parry and Danny to get involved in a few fights whilst Jane runs around trying to make sense of the seances that are now being held at Stanner Hall. The other plot line has our erstwhile self-doubting Deliverance Minister trying to stop her new Sunday service turning into a miracle parlour. She focuses on one Dexter Harris (unwitting culprit in a joyriding tragedy when he was a child) whose boorish character overshadows a greater truth. Unwittingly herself, Merrily finds herself the target for two groups to perform an exorcism whilst in the background a hereditary insanity wreaks revenge on the Kington farmers. The lengthy denouement brings the usual cast of characters of Jane, Lol, Gomer, Merrily, DI Bliss et al together during a snow-bound night at Stanner Hall after Dacre is found dead and the child murderess, Brigid Parsons, claims guilt and a desire to confess all to Merrily. As deception becomes clear and Rickman unravels the family histories and personal links amongst our protagonists it all begins to make a painful sense as he expertly weaves stark relationships in with a spritism that brings Merrily together with all for an exorcism before the all too-human culprit is found. There is no doubt that Rickman is a fine author and he expertly crafts crime thrillers that have that touch of chilling supernat

Phil Rickman's latest novel, The Prayer of the Night Shepherd, has it all -- the historical legend of Black Vaughn and the Black Dog, the literary legend of Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, the Rev. Merrily Watkins, the local "deliverance minister" (read "exorcist")whose work is fast becoming legend in the village of Ledwardine -- as well as a number of local murders, past and present, that are very real indeed. The result is a psychological thriller and supernatural whodunnit, artfully anchored in the culture and landscape of the Welsh border. Merrily and her 17 year-old daughter, Jane, share center stage in Rickman's latest effort. Jane, now an "independent working woman on the Border," has just taken her first "real job," working weekends at a possibly haunted hotel owned by Ben and Amber Foley, a couple "from Off". Ben, a one-time TV producer, and Antony Largo, a Scottish film-maker, enlist Jane and take advantage of her enthusiam to help them with a project -- recording a seance to be held at the Foley's hotel. However, during the filming, Jane discovers that her co-workers and the guests at Stanner Hall are not what -- or who-- she was lead to believe. Back at the Vicarage, Merrily has reluctantly agreed to use her newly-emerging healing ability to help the rather unpleasant nephew of a parishioner become free of the anxiety-induced asthma that has plagued him since childhood and the tragic death of his young cousin. She must also play the good shepherd trying to save a young sheep rancher bent on suicide, having found himself caught in a dangerous game of fox and hound with a local landowner and his hired thugs. Rickman once again works his literary magic, blending disparate themes with a diverse cast of richly-written characters. The result is a taut narrative fusion of the supernatural and detective genres, what Rickman calls "a spiritual procedural," and he makes this story all the more intriguing with what is becoming another hallmark of the Merrily Watkins series: the intricate lacing of fiction with fact. Whether you're already a fan of the Rev. Watkins or a first-time reader, you won't be disappointed with Phil Rickman's latest offering.