Merrily Watkins
3 primary works • 18 total works
Book 4
As high summer bakes the rich earth of north-east Herefordshire, dark shadows gather - quite literally - round a converted hopkiln where the last owner was savagely murdered. Though the local vicar dismisses claims by its current occupants that the place is haunted, their story is soon splashed over a Sunday newspaper - and Merrily Watkins is directed by the Bishop of Hereford to defuse this situation. Merrily, however, is already contending with a woman's claim that her adopted teenage daughter is possessed by an evil spirit. In both cases Merrily remains unconvinced but, in this summer of oppressive heat and sudden storms, nothing is ever quite what it seems.
As she is drawn into a tangle of trickery, deceit, corruption and sexual menace, her hastily conducted exorcism produces unhappy results. With her career now on the line, she and her good friend Lol Robinson try desperately to uncover the secrets of Knight's From - a village concealing a past as twisted as the bines on the hop-plants once surrounding it. There they discover how local history became entwined with the legacy and superstitions of the Romani gypsies who once harvested the hops. And it seems the Rom had long memories -- on both sides of the grave.
Book 10
Book 12
The 12th instalment in the Merrily Watkins series
When a man's body is discovered near the picturesque town of Hay-on-Wye, his death appears to be 'unnatural' in every sense. Merrily Watkins, priest, single mother and exorcist, is drafted in to investigate.
A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning - until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there has him consulting Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal.
It's nearly forty years since the town of Hay-on-Wye was declared an independent state by its self-styled king. A development seen at the time as a joke. But the pastiche had a serious side. And behind it, unknown to most of the townsfolk, lay a darker design, a hidden history of murder and ritual magic, the relics of which are only now becoming visible.
It's a situation that will take Merrily Watkins - on her own for the first time in years and facing public humiliation over a separate case - to the edge of madness.
A disused church near a Welsh border hamlet has already been sold off by the Church when it's discovered that the new owners are 'pagans' who intend to use the building for their own rituals. The local rector, an extreme evangelical, is appalled and blames these inoffensive middle-class witches for infesting the whole community with evil… even calling in the diocesan exorcist, Revd Merrily Watkins. An atmosphere of stifling menace develops - with the persecution of innocent people, false accusations, and the formation of a Christian vigilante group.
As this cauldron of conflict threatens to boil over into serious violence, Merrily uses all the diplomacy she can muster. But, as the confrontation moves towards its climax at Candlemass, she is unaware of a personal threat against her from a deranged and violent man.
Merrily must unearth the mysteries of the decaying village of Underhowle, and tackle a particularly stubborn Detective Inspector who strays off course...
'Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman.' - Guardian
'You're looking at his inspiration. These are ones he wishes he'd done, the ones he wishes he'd got to first.'
After half a century of decay, the village of Underhowle looked to be on the brink of a new prosperity. Now, instead, it seems destined for notoriety as the home of a psychotic serial killer.
DI Frannie Bliss, of Hereford CID, is convinced he knows where the bodies are buried, but Merrily Watkins wonders if Bliss isn't blinkered by personal ambition. Are the Underhowle deaths really linked to the legacy of Fred West and the most sickening cycle of killings in British criminal history?
When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace.
Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side.
It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Suddenly there are events she can't talk about as she and her daughter Jane find themselves potentially on the wrong side of the law.
In the city of Hereford, DI Frannie Bliss, investigating a shooting, must confront the apparent growth of organised crime, also contaminating the countryside.
On the Welsh border, the old ways are at war with the modern world. As the days shorten and the fog gives way to ice and snow, a savage killing draws Merrily Watkins into a conflict centred on one of Britain's most famous medieval churches, its walls laden with ancient symbolism.
Midwinter of the Spirit, televised last year to worldwide critical acclaim, was the first novel to reflect the reality of exorcism in modern Britain. All of a Winter's Night is the 15th episode in this electrifying series.
The Merrily Watkins series will have you hooked. Join Merrily in her chilling tales of murder, mystery and intrigue.
Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman. - Guardian
The new vicar had never wanted a picture-postcard parish. But appearances deceive. Ledwardine has a hidden history of abuse and murder, and Merrily Watkins might do well to heed the
anonymous message that speaks of The Devil's Minister and adds. Let him lie. Be warned.
This is the novel that introduces Merrily Watkins, before the ongoing contemporary exorcism series begins with Midwinter of the Spirit.
Adapted into a major ITV series based on Phil Rickman's much-loved character Reverend Merrily Watkins featuring a BAFTA award-winning cast.
'They'll follow you home... breathe down your phone at night... a prime target for every psychotic grinder of the dark satanic mills that ever sacrificed a chicken...'
Diocesan Exorcist: a job viewed by the Church of England with such extreme suspicion that they changed the name.
It's Deliverance Consultant now. Still, it seems, no job for a woman. But when the Bishop offers it to Merrily Watkins, parish priest and single mum, she's in no position to refuse.
It starts badly for Merrily and gets no easier. As an early winter slices through the old city of Hereford, a body is found in the River Wye, an ancient church is desecrated and signs of evil appear in the cathedral itself, where the tomb of a medieval saint lies in pieces.
INTRODUCING MERRILY
Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother, exorcist, works for the Diocese of Hereford in a remote village on the border of England and Wales. Like many men and women doing an essentially medieval job in an increasingly secular society, she's never certain how much she can permit herself to believe. It doesn't help that she sometimes has to work with psychiatrists and the police. Or that her employer, the Church of England, is far from free of prejudice, sexism, greed and corruption. Or that Merrily's teenage daughter is more interested in paganism than the priesthood. No wonder she smokes. No wonder she occasionally lapses into language hard to find in the Bible.
THE SECRETS OF PAIN
The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back the Regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself... and is coming close to a breakdown.
Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border have their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, the senior investigating officer, DI Frannie Bliss is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure.
With the framework of her own world beginning to crack, Merrily Watkins is persuaded to venture into areas where neither a priest nor a woman is welcome... to unearth secrets linked with the border's pagan past. Secrets which she knows can never be disclosed.
THE SECOND INSTALMENT IN THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES
'They'll follow you home... breathe down your phone at night... a prime target for every psychotic grinder of the dark satanic mills that ever sacrificed a chicken...'
Diocesan Exorcist: a job viewed by the Church of England with such extreme suspicion that they changed the name.
It's Deliverance Consultant now. Still, it seems, no job for a woman. But when the Bishop offers it to Merrily Watkins, parish priest and single mum, she's in no position to refuse.
It starts badly for Merrily and gets no easier. As an early winter slices through the old city of Hereford, a body is found in the River Wye, an ancient church is desecrated and signs of evil appear in the cathedral itself, where the tomb of a medieval saint lies in pieces.
In a Victorian mansion-turned-hotel on the Welsh Border, Ben Foley, a redundant TV drama producer, hosts unprofitable murder mystery weekends and nurtures his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this hotel is the house on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his famous Baskerville Hall. It's a local tradition that the origins of The Hound of the Baskervilles lie not on Dartmoor but in the Herefordshire legend of a black dog foreshadowing death. Young Jane Watkins, whose first weekend job is at the Stanner Hall Hotel, is intrigued. But Jane's mother, the Revd Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy when she learns how Ben Foley proposes to try 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.
The border town of Ludlow has it all: exquisite medieval streets, an imposing ruined castle, a parish church the size of a cathedral and a weight of history and legend. Wealthy people, famous people, have come to Ludlow to live. A sad teenage boy comes here to die ... dramatically, at sunset, in a fall from the ruins. Accident or suicide? Either way, no great mystery. Or is there?
Robbie Walsh was the nephew of former Detective Sergeant Andy Mumford, newly - and reluctantly - retired from West Mercia CID. When Mumford's ailing mother becomes convinced she's still seeing her dead grandson in the old town, he brings in Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance consultant to the Diocese of Hereford. Is it dementia, delusion or something even more disturbing?
Both scepticism and the dark underside of belief threaten Phil Rickman's engagingly open-minded heroine in this brilliantly structured, atmospheric thriller.
The discovery of centuries old human bones; a haunted 12th century house; a medieval legend spawning a modern cult... Merrily must piece together a most insidious mystery.
'Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman.' - Guardian
When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found amongst the roots of a tree blown down on the city's Castle Green. But why have they been stolen?
At the nearby Cathedral, another storm is building around a new, modernising bishop who believes that if the Church is to survive it must phase out irrelevant archaic practices. Not good news for Merrily Watkins, consultant on the paranormal or, as it used to be known, diocesan exorcist. Especially as she's now presented with the job at its most medieval.
In the moody countryside on the edge of Wales, a rambling 12th-century house is thought to be haunted. Although its new owners don't believe in ghosts, they do believe in spiritual darkness and the need for exorcism. But their approach to Merrily is oblique and guarded. No-one can be told - least of all, the new bishop.
Merrily's discovery of the house's links with the medieval legend of a man who resisted mortality threatens to expose the hidden history of a more modern cult and its trail of insidious abuse. A trail that may not be closed.
With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes it looks like a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins in an ancient community forced to untangle its own history against the swirling uncertainty of the future.
'Brilliantly eerie' PETER JAMES
'Engrossing and beautifully dark . . . a cracking good read' JO BRAND
'A most original sleuth' THE TIMES
Welcome to the River Wye: a place of poetry, historic obsession... and occult murder.
The curious death of an estate agent is being investigated by detective David Vaynor who, before joining the police, studied the famous 18th century poet William Wordsworth. As Vaynor is discovering, the dark paganism that changed Wordsworth's life still lingers on the banks of the River Wye today - and there are some killings even the police can't approach...
Enter Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum, and diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Called away from her local hauntings, Merrily finds herself confronting the riverside ghosts who, as Wordsworth puts it, 'promote ill purposes and flatter foul desires'. In the ancient heart of the Wye Valley, a buried grudge is about to come to light.
*Book 16 in the Merrily Watkins series - now a critically acclaimed ITV drama starring Anna Maxwell-Martin!*
More praise for Phil Rickman
'Cleverly illuminates the darkest corners of our imagination' John Connolly
'The layers, the characters, the humour, the spookiness - perfect' Elly Griffiths
'First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night' Daily Mail
'No one writes better of the shadow-frontier between the supernatural and the real world' Bernard Cornwell
The Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford must reveal the haunting presence of Susan Lulham...
First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night. - Daily Mail
The angular, modernist house was an unexpected bargain for Zoe and Jonathan Mahonie - newcomers to the city of Hereford and apparently unaware that the house's pristine, white interior walls had been coated with the lifeblood of a previous owner.
How is Merrily Watkins, Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford, to know if Zoe Mahonie is lying or deluded when she claims that the wrathful Susan Lulham is still in residence?
Then comes another bloody death.
Who is the real killer?
A MERRILY WATKINS SERIES NOVELLA