Prayer Of The Night Shepherd: A Revd Merrily Watkins Mystery (A Merrily Watkins Mystery) - Hardcover

Rickman, Phil

4.27

1,834 ratings by Goodreads

9780333908068: Prayer Of The Night Shepherd: A Revd Merrily Watkins Mystery (A Merrily Watkins Mystery)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333908066 ISBN 13: 9780333908068

Publisher: Macmillan UK, 2004

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At Stanner Hall, a Victorian mansion-turned-hotel, Ben Foley hosts murder-mystery weekends and strives to prove that his hotel is the house on which Arthur Conan Doyle based his immortal Baskerville Hall. 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 terrifying medieval exorcism—but with a chain of deaths that is far from fictional.

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From the Publisher:

At Stanner Hall, a Victorian mansion–turned–hotel, Ben Foley, unemployed TV producer, hosts unprofitable murder–mystery weekends and nurtures his dream—to prove that Stanner Hall is the house on which Arthur Conan Doyle based his immortal Baskerville Hall. It’s a local tradition that the origins of The Hounds of the Baskervilles lie not in Dartmoor, but in the Herfordshire legend of a black dog foreshadowing death. Young Jane Watkins, whose first weekend job is at the hotel, is intrigued. But Jane’s mother, the Reverend Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy when she learns how Ben Foley proposes 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 terrifying medieval exorcism—but with a chain of death that is far from fictional.

From the Author:

The Merrily Watkins series is a set of novels about the people whose job is to investigate the paranormal and attempt to deal with any antisocial elements it appears to throw up.

Here in Britain, there's a very long-established tradition of exorcism, but it's been changing recently. Exorcists -and there's one in every diocese- are now known as Deliverance ministers or consultants. Their job is to advise the regular clergy on all aspects of possible psychic disturbance: ghostly and poltergeist phenomena, negative spiritual practices and, very occasionally, possession.

It's a risky and controversial occupation- especially for a woman.

Merrily Watkins is a widow in her mid-to-late thirties, she's deeply insecure, often paranoid about some of the things she's called on to do, would hate ever to be thought pious and... oh yes, she has a volitile teenage daughter, Jane, who is more interested in paganism.

Merrily is vicar of a rural parish in Herefordshire, on the Welsh Border, and her Deliverance work is run from an office near Hereford Cathedral. In her job -as with a number of the exorcists I've talked to in the course of continuing research- Merrily is frequently involved in police investigations. So this series is, essentially, crime. Most of the crime is very dark, sometimes a little nightmarish.

Not horror, though, and definitely not fantasy- even if the element of mystery sometimes exists on, shall we say, more than one level...?

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