Review: All of a Winter's Night

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All of a Winter's Night (Merrily Watkins #15)
Phil Rickman
Corvus, 5 January 2017
HB, 487pp

Even if I wasn't married to a Church of England vicar and living in a country village, I'd still be obsessively keen on these adventures of Merrily Watkins, diocesan deliverance advisor and keeper of secrets. As I am, I love sifting over the ecclesiastical politics and spotting what's plausible and what's less so (it's fiction - of course it embroiders in places!)

I also love the writing, of course, and in this latest instalment, Rickman is on cracking form, with Gomer Parry back (fans will rejoice) and a juicy mystery that occupies not only Merrily, Jane and Lol but also Frannie Bliss and Annie Howe. The fun, as ever, is seeing how the apparently separate events unfold and join up - and how close Merrily comes to ruin and disaster in the process.

I felt that the balance between the two aspects was better here than in Friends of the Dusk, with Merrily playing more of a part and dealing with some real spiritual issues, although these were less of the classically horrifying Exorcist style and more knotty pastoral problems with a potential spiritual - supernatural - dimension. Indeed, her biggest problem here is arguable the presence of an interfering rationalist priest with his own agenda. The interplay between Merrily's concerns, Lol's career worries and Jane's personal life is as ever very well done - Rickman creates characters you'd just love to pop down the the pub for a drink with, at the same time as portraying an utterly modern England beset by employment, housing and development concerns.

The atmosphere is also well done, making use of all those nighttime, befogged  trips between Ledwardine, Hereford and various remote rural churches. Rickman has a knack, fully exploited here, of writing place as character, picking up on all those subtle cues that make somewhere seem right... or not...

And speaking of remote churches, it's when one of those crops up that the story becomes positively numinous. Rickman's ability for conjuring meaning and story from the carvings or ambience of the silent building is second to none. (And, yes, I used the word "conjure" deliberately...) This author knows how to tread the fine line between reality and fantasy. We are never told for sure exactly how far the supernatural is real here, only the different perceptions of Merrily, Lol and Jane - and their rationalisations. Yet their reactions are enough to distinguish these books from mundane crime fiction, or event, say, from something like Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries where we're tantalised by a suggestion of the supernatural which is always then explained away.

Rickman is also I think unusual in understanding and in sympathising with Christian, Pagan and (as we see here) other spiritual outlooks, appreciating where they may reinforce and where they may contradict. His writing is a long way from setting up simplistic oppositions - except, perhaps, where it comes to Annie Howe whose disdain for "superstition" is intact as ever. But, as we know (but Merrily doesn't!) Annie has her own contradictions and secrets.

So - excellent, taut, intelligent detective fiction with just a bit of a twist, nice midwinter spookiness and time spent with some characters I've come to know and love. A good start to 2017!

Review: Friends of the Dusk by Phil Rickman

Friends of the Dusk

Phil Rickman

Corvus, December 2015

HB, 460pp

I bought this book from the Waterstones shop in the Oracle Centre, Reading.  I was pleased to see it on the shelf because it's a I follow Rickman's Merrily books - but had no idea it was coming out. I scour publisher catalogues, follow publicists on Twitter and trawl book blogs - and yet, surprises are still possible!

This is even more astonishing given that Merrily has now been adapted for TV. Bit of a publicity failure there, I think.

Friends of the Dusk covers familiar ground for fans of the series - the uncertainties and difficulties of Merrily's life as the Hereford Diocese's "deliverance consultant" ("Exorcist" to you and me), her teenage daughter Jane's growing-up angst, Merrily's relationship with Lol and, of course, the oddly matched police couple Frannie Bliss and Annie Howe. Here, Merrily struggles with a hostile new Bishop at the same time as she gets an awkward call for help from a Muslim couple. Bliss and Howe investigate a missing skull, and Jane struggles with - well, teenage stuff. Along the way we see a very nasty old man in a care home, and reacquaint ourselves with Athena White.

Some things are a little different. Gomer Parry only appears briefly, and both Merrily and Gomer (when he shows up) are puffing on e-cigarettes. We get rather less than usual of Ledwardine life - the daily ins and outs of the small town - and the challenges Merrily faces all come from outside: the Bishop, the problems of the Maliks in Cwmarrow (which confront Merrily with political, rather than spiritual, issues, and a chance to become emrboiled in controversy at just the wrong time). I rather regretted this, and also the feeling that Merrily is being acted on rather than setting the pace.  Rickman evokes the creepiness of Cwmarrow very well, and has some other fine moments of tension and ear which wind Merrily up but she doesn't actually do a great - rather she's the catalyst for others to reveal information - Huw Owen, maverick freelance exorcist, the Maliks and those who lived at Cwymarrow before them, Jane who undertakes a lot of background research into Cwmarrow, even Sophie the Bishop's Secretary. And of while she's the occasion for the new Bishop to unload a great deal of negativity - he clearly wants rid of her - again she doesn't do much. 

We've seen in previous books of the series how much of a force Ms Watkins can be, so this was somewhat disappointing. (In earlier books she has sometimes been less central to the action - with Howe and Bliss taking more of a role - but she was always active, even so).  I also felt that the ending didn't, perhaps, come together. There is a very quick resolution of one plot thread which had been built up throughout the book into a real menace and might, realistically, have been given rather more space to wind down. Another - involving Howe and Bliss - doesn't resolve (but that's OK with me, no doubt it will feature I the next book). I was also left unclear about the precise scope of the supernatural element.

That isn't meant to detract from the book. Time spent in the company of Merrily Watkins is always time well spent, and Friends of the Dead is, as ever, well written. It also has a surprisingly fresh take - based on real events, or at least events as recounted in medieval chronicles - on what has become a rather hackneyed staple of horror fiction. And there are some real gems in here - Rickman could I'm sure easily produce the YA "Chronicles of the Summoner" books which feature here (though I hope he doesn't, given what we learn of their origin) and he springs a number of surprises as well as entering into the mind of teenage Jane in what seemed (at least to this middle aged male reviewer) a very convincing way.

My overall verdict would be, I think, that if you like the Watkins books this is the sort of thing you'll like - if you've been turned on to them by the TV production you're best in any case to start at the beginning (because spoilers, but also because you get a more intense Merrily experience).

Disclaimer: the reviewer's wife is a Church of England Vicar, but definitely not a deliverance consultant.