A review by jimbowen0306
All of a Winter's Night by Phil Rickman
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.