jimbowen0306's review
3.0
One of the fictional characters I have always enjoyed is Merrily Watkins, who acts as diocesan exorcist in the area around Hereford England, a boarder area where the contrast between the clinical English and the more emotional and mystical Welsh is explored in murder mysteries.
In this book the son of a local farmer is killed (which might have something to do with a Hatfield vs. McCoy thing going on), local thieves are roaming the countryside on the lookout for what they can steel from farmers, and a former bent copper (and father of the "straight cop" used a lot by Rickman) is running in an election to head the local police force. While all this is going on, Watkins is dealing with her boss (the Bishop) who has doubts about the whole exorcism thing (which is something I've never understood, if you believe in a Christian God, then by definition you believe in the Devil, so surely you should do something about it right?).
The book was decent enough thriller. It had all the standard mystery things going on. If you like mysteries, you'll like this book. My problems are that I'm getting a bit tired of lead characters being put upon as much as Watkins is being put upon at the moment. In addition I actually used to like Watkins daughter in the series too. She was a decent teenager, who was passionate about things, naïve, but generally a spunky kid, but now she seems as irritatingly unconfident as her mum.
In this book the son of a local farmer is killed (which might have something to do with a Hatfield vs. McCoy thing going on), local thieves are roaming the countryside on the lookout for what they can steel from farmers, and a former bent copper (and father of the "straight cop" used a lot by Rickman) is running in an election to head the local police force. While all this is going on, Watkins is dealing with her boss (the Bishop) who has doubts about the whole exorcism thing (which is something I've never understood, if you believe in a Christian God, then by definition you believe in the Devil, so surely you should do something about it right?).
The book was decent enough thriller. It had all the standard mystery things going on. If you like mysteries, you'll like this book. My problems are that I'm getting a bit tired of lead characters being put upon as much as Watkins is being put upon at the moment. In addition I actually used to like Watkins daughter in the series too. She was a decent teenager, who was passionate about things, naïve, but generally a spunky kid, but now she seems as irritatingly unconfident as her mum.
marite's review
3.0
Jeg er begeistret for de andre bøkene i denne serien, men denne slet jeg med. Å bruke en uke på å lese en Merrily Watkins-bok, sier sitt. Kanskje det går litt på tomgang for forfatteren? Merrily sliter med de samme problemene hun har hatt gjennom alle bøkene, Jane utvikler seg ikke til tross for at hun er blitt voksen, og selve plottet utvikles i overkant langsomt.
ciannait76's review
5.0
And she is back ladies and gentlemen! Finally, Merrily is back to her old self. The only thing I miss is not seeing more of Gomer.
judenoseinabook's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Fascinating look at rural traditions versus modernity.
Green men, greed, gross ambition, family feuds. It's all there.
Green men, greed, gross ambition, family feuds. It's all there.
skonyo's review
4.0
4 - Reading a book of Merrily Watkins is like going home . Put the kettle on , lit the fire put your woolen socks on and you are set to go.
jimbowen0306's review against another edition
3.0
One of the fictional characters I have always enjoyed is Merrily Watkins, who acts as diocesan exorcist in the area around Hereford England, a boarder area where the contrast between the clinical English and the more emotional and mystical Welsh is explored in murder mysteries.
In this book the son of a local farmer is killed (which might have something to do with a Hatfield vs. McCoy thing going on), local thieves are roaming the countryside on the lookout for what they can steel from farmers, and a former bent copper (and father of the "straight cop" used a lot by Rickman) is running in an election to head the local police force. While all this is going on, Watkins is dealing with her boss (the Bishop) who has doubts about the whole exorcism thing (which is something I've never understood, if you believe in a Christian God, then by definition you believe in the Devil, so surely you should do something about it right?).
The book was decent enough thriller. It had all the standard mystery things going on. If you like mysteries, you'll like this book. My problems are that I'm getting a bit tired of lead characters being put upon as much as Watkins is being put upon at the moment. In addition I actually used to like Watkins daughter in the series too. She was a decent teenager, who was passionate about things, naïve, but generally a spunky kid, but now she seems as irritatingly unconfident as her mum.
In this book the son of a local farmer is killed (which might have something to do with a Hatfield vs. McCoy thing going on), local thieves are roaming the countryside on the lookout for what they can steel from farmers, and a former bent copper (and father of the "straight cop" used a lot by Rickman) is running in an election to head the local police force. While all this is going on, Watkins is dealing with her boss (the Bishop) who has doubts about the whole exorcism thing (which is something I've never understood, if you believe in a Christian God, then by definition you believe in the Devil, so surely you should do something about it right?).
The book was decent enough thriller. It had all the standard mystery things going on. If you like mysteries, you'll like this book. My problems are that I'm getting a bit tired of lead characters being put upon as much as Watkins is being put upon at the moment. In addition I actually used to like Watkins daughter in the series too. She was a decent teenager, who was passionate about things, naïve, but generally a spunky kid, but now she seems as irritatingly unconfident as her mum.
hayesstw's review against another edition
4.0
I suppose one could sum it up by saying this this book is to morris dancing what [b:The nine tailors|126675|The Nine Tailors (Lord Peter Wimsey, #11)|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353285546s/126675.jpg|2795358] by [a:Dorothy Sayers|8734|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1519840173p2/8734.jpg] is to church bell ringing.
I looked at this book very carefully before buying it, to make sure that it was not [b:Midwinter of the spirit|317372|Midwinter of the Spirit (Merrily Watkins, #2)|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391314794s/317372.jpg|1779108] sneakily published under a different title, since they have republished old Phil Rickman books under new titles before, as a trap for the unwary.
It turned out, however, that I had not read this one before.
[a:Phil Rickman|182452|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1292252234p2/182452.jpg]'s early books were of the fantasy/horror genre, but he seems to have been moving in his more recent ones more towards the crime and detective genre. In this one, however, he seems to have been trying to give equal prominence, switching scenes between the Revd Merrily Watkins, Church of England Vicar of Ledwardine in Herefordshire, who is also the diocesan exorsist, but with the updated and rather twee title of "deliverance consultant", and Hereford detectives Annie Howe and Francis Bliss who do their detecting while trying to keep their affair secret from their colleagues.
It's a while since I've seen a new Phil Rickman book -- as I noted, the last one turned out to be a false alarm, mutton dressed as lamb. Perhaps I have rosy memories of his style, or perhaps his writing style has changed, but I found this one stylistically disappointing. I don't know whether is writing style has got worse, or whether I have just become more critical.
One of the problems is that he has sudden changes of scene, but the characters are only indicated by pronouns. So you have "he said" and "she said", but only halfway through the paragraph do you realise that the he and she are not the same people who were in the previous paragraph, and go back to the beginning and read it with different characters in mind.
In the first few chapters, in Particular, it looks as though Rickman has been reading the elementary text books on fiction writing that give advice to wannabe writers -- especially the advice to end every chapter with a cliffhanger. The problem is that for the first 15 chapters or so the build up to the cliffhanger falls flat in the next chapter, so that every chapter begins with an anticlimax. This becomes tiresome after a while. So one learns that people have been terrible things in a churchyard. It turns out to have been morris dancing.
I first learnt about morris dancing from the comic strip The Perishers, which appeared in the Daily Mirror back in the 1960s. The role of the morris men in the comic strip was never terribly clear, but they struck me as nostalgic old gits who were trying to keep alive imagined traditions of a Merrie England that had never existed. Twenty years later I saw them performing in real life in a series of church fetes in Pretoria, the ind of events announced on their posters as a "Fayre". I once made a video juxtaposing them with a group of Pedi women doing a folk dance in what is now Limpopo province, but was then called the Northern Transvaal. Two folk traditions, one local, the other imported.
Rickman tried to introduce morris dancing as though it was uncanny, spooky and scary, but in my experience, however, it was just quaint and nostalgic, and morris men no more sinister than people who liked going around ringing church bells.
As the book goes on it gets better, at least as far as the plot is concerned, and I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to say that ultimately the villain turns out to be capitalism, especially as exemplified by property developers. In that it doesn't differ much from some of the other more recent Phil Rickman books.
I looked at this book very carefully before buying it, to make sure that it was not [b:Midwinter of the spirit|317372|Midwinter of the Spirit (Merrily Watkins, #2)|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391314794s/317372.jpg|1779108] sneakily published under a different title, since they have republished old Phil Rickman books under new titles before, as a trap for the unwary.
It turned out, however, that I had not read this one before.
[a:Phil Rickman|182452|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1292252234p2/182452.jpg]'s early books were of the fantasy/horror genre, but he seems to have been moving in his more recent ones more towards the crime and detective genre. In this one, however, he seems to have been trying to give equal prominence, switching scenes between the Revd Merrily Watkins, Church of England Vicar of Ledwardine in Herefordshire, who is also the diocesan exorsist, but with the updated and rather twee title of "deliverance consultant", and Hereford detectives Annie Howe and Francis Bliss who do their detecting while trying to keep their affair secret from their colleagues.
It's a while since I've seen a new Phil Rickman book -- as I noted, the last one turned out to be a false alarm, mutton dressed as lamb. Perhaps I have rosy memories of his style, or perhaps his writing style has changed, but I found this one stylistically disappointing. I don't know whether is writing style has got worse, or whether I have just become more critical.
One of the problems is that he has sudden changes of scene, but the characters are only indicated by pronouns. So you have "he said" and "she said", but only halfway through the paragraph do you realise that the he and she are not the same people who were in the previous paragraph, and go back to the beginning and read it with different characters in mind.
In the first few chapters, in Particular, it looks as though Rickman has been reading the elementary text books on fiction writing that give advice to wannabe writers -- especially the advice to end every chapter with a cliffhanger. The problem is that for the first 15 chapters or so the build up to the cliffhanger falls flat in the next chapter, so that every chapter begins with an anticlimax. This becomes tiresome after a while. So one learns that people have been terrible things in a churchyard. It turns out to have been morris dancing.
I first learnt about morris dancing from the comic strip The Perishers, which appeared in the Daily Mirror back in the 1960s. The role of the morris men in the comic strip was never terribly clear, but they struck me as nostalgic old gits who were trying to keep alive imagined traditions of a Merrie England that had never existed. Twenty years later I saw them performing in real life in a series of church fetes in Pretoria, the ind of events announced on their posters as a "Fayre". I once made a video juxtaposing them with a group of Pedi women doing a folk dance in what is now Limpopo province, but was then called the Northern Transvaal. Two folk traditions, one local, the other imported.
Rickman tried to introduce morris dancing as though it was uncanny, spooky and scary, but in my experience, however, it was just quaint and nostalgic, and morris men no more sinister than people who liked going around ringing church bells.
As the book goes on it gets better, at least as far as the plot is concerned, and I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to say that ultimately the villain turns out to be capitalism, especially as exemplified by property developers. In that it doesn't differ much from some of the other more recent Phil Rickman books.
shibamistress's review against another edition
4.0
Another fabulous entry into the Merrily Watkins series. I couldn't wait to read this one--it doesn't come out til April in the US--so I ordered it from the UK. It was worth it! A good story that engages contemporary issues, as always, and all our favorite characters are present. I hope it is not the end of the series: there is certainly room for more! But if it were, it would be a satisfying one, though everything is not tied up in this one, so I do hope for yet another Merrily book!
honnomushi13's review against another edition
3.0
Good thriller. Not quite as good as some of the others ,
lisasf2f04's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5