All Of A Winter’s Night

BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 . . . All Of a Winter’s Night, by Phil Rickman

There are no honourable mentions here, because, (if you’ve been good) you will have seen them all in the previous four posts. Regular readers of this blog, and those who read my interviews, reviews and features on Crime Fiction Lover, will know that I am a massive fan of Phil Rickman’s books and, in particular, the series featuring the thoroughly modern, but often conflicted, parish priest, Merrily Watkins. She is one of the most intriguing and best written characters in modern fiction, but Rickman (left) doesn’t stop there. He has created a whole repertory company of supporting characters who range in style and substance from the wizened sage Gomer Parry – he of the roll-up fags and uncanny perception (often revealed as he digs holes for septic tanks) – to the twin-set and pearls imperturbability of the Bishop’s secretary, Sophie. In between we have the fragile genius of Merrily’s boyfriend, musician Lol Robinson, the maverick Scouse policeman Frannie Bliss and, of course, Merrily’s adventurous daughter Jane, for whom the soubriquet ‘Calamity” would fit nicely, such is her propensity to go where both angels – and her anxious mother – fear to tread.

These actors flit in and out of the stories, but there is one other character, ever present and formidable. I am in the autumn of my days and, casting aside false modesty, widely read, and I have likened Rickman’s use of landscape to that of Thomas Hardy. The Welsh Marches – Hereford, Radnor, Brecon, Monmouth – combine to make this extra character. The windswept hills, sullen valleys, glittering streams and abandoned chapels all play a part in Rickman’s novels, and never more effective than in my Best Book of 2017 – All Of a Winter’s Night.

The art of Morris Dancing has often been ridiculed, never better than when it was suggested that a Morris team could be an effective counter-display by the England Rugby team when faced with New Zealand’s ferocious Haka. But here, the faintly ridiculous concept of men dancing around with bells on their trousers and funny hats on their heads becomes as sinister as anything ever dredged up from the fevered imaginations of Poe or Lovecraft. Rickman has his finger on the pulse of an old Britain, a land steeped in superstition, symbolism, and distinctly un-Christian – not to say pre-Christian – traditions.

In All Of a Winter’s Night a young man has been killed in a mysterious car crash, and his funeral attracts bitterly opposed members of the same family. Merrily tries to preside over potential chaos, and her efforts to ensure that Aidan Lloyd rest in peace are not helped when his body is disinterred, dressed in his Morris Man costume, and then clumsily reburied. Rickman adds to the mix the very real and solid presence of the ancient church at Kilpeck, with its pagan – and downright vulgar (in some eyes) carvings. The climax of the novel comes when Merrily tries to conduct a service of remembrance in the tiny church. What happens next is, literally, breathtaking – and one of the most terrifying and disturbing chapters of any novel you will read this year or next. With its memorable mix of crime fiction, menacing landscape, human jealousy, sinister tradition and pure menace, All Of a Winter’s Night is my book of 2017.

December 24, 2017 0

The great journalist and broadcaster Ed Murrow said of Winston Churchill, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle..” I believe that the best writers do the same with the landscape their characters inhabit. My theory applies to ‘serious’ literature as well as crime fiction: just as Hardy used his thinly disguised Wessex, the London of Charles Dickens is a major character in many of his novels; Arnold Bennett’s tales brought the Staffordshire Potteries to life, while for both DH Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe, Nottinghamshire was vital to their writing. Phil Rickman’s terrain is the borderland between Herfordshire and Wales, with its isolated villages, abandoned chapels, insular farmers and villages where the past is sometimes more real than the present.

All Of A Winter’s Night is the latest episode in the turbulent career of the Reverend Merrily Watkins. Her philandering husband long since dead in a catastrophic road accident, Merrily has a daughter to raise and a living to make. Her living has a day job and also what she refers to as her ‘night job’. She is Vicar of the Herefordshire village of Ledwardine, but also the diocesan Deliverance Consultant. That lofty term is longhand for what the tabloids might call “exorcist”. If you are new to the series, you could do worse than follow the link to our readers’ guide to The Merrily Watkins Novels.

A young man has died after his off-road vehicle has been mangled – along with his face – in a collision with a speeding white van on a country lane. Merrily presides over a funeral made difficult and perfunctory by the visible animosity between various members of the lad’s family. The fates are determined that Aidan Lloyd will not rest in peace, however. His body is disinterred, re-dressed in the uniform of a Morris dancing team from the village of Kilpeck, and then clumsily reburied.

At this point, three regular characters in this successful series intervene. Local JCB driver, drainage man, grave-digger and savant Gomer Parry is worried that his cemetery handiwork has been compromised, while emotionally fragile singer-songwriter (and boyfriend of Merrily) Lol Robinson just happens to be passing, along with Jane Watkins, daughter of Merrily, and full time pagan and environmental activist. They discover that mischief has been perpetrated on poor young Lloyd, little realising how their discovery will compromise Merrily, who is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to retain her job in the face of opposition from a modernising Bishop of Hereford.

The shocks and scares come thick and fast, but Rickman is much too good a writer to use a shovel to apply the chills and horror: instead, he uses the finest of squirrel-hair brushes, and we readers suffer endless torments of subtle suggestions, veiled threat and a pervading sense that all is far from well. There is more than enough conventional crime, dealt with – as always in the series – by expat Scouse cop Frannie Bliss and his secret girlfriend (and boss) Annie Howe, whose estranged father is making a bid to become the areas Police and Crime Commissioner.

The novel plays out against a bleak and gloomy Herefordshire November, where the brooding hills are shrouded with mist, and the outlying villages clinging to the steep slopes are uninviting, with doors remaining firmly shut in the faces of anyone “from off”. The sense of menace is compounded by the fact that both Merrily and the well-meaning local police come to realise that the death of Aidan Lloyd has opened a gateway into something which lies deeply embedded in the memory, landscape and folklore of a land where belief and conviction are older and more potent than modern concepts such as law and order. There are more deaths, and this time there is no pretence that they are accidental.

The snow, long threatened, sweeps in from the Black Mountains.

“NOT LONG AFTER ten p.m., it began like a few grey feathers blown from a nest. Soon it was filling the cracks in the walls and gleaming like epaulettes on the sagging shoulders of the graves in the churchyard.”

Merrily prepares for a service of Remembrance for the souls of both Aidan Lloyd and Kilpeck’s late vicar, but this no ordinary service. It coincides with the winter solstice, what John Donne called “The Year’s Midnight”, and will close with an appearance of the Kilpeck Morris, who will dance in honour of The Man of Leaves, one of the images carved into the church fabric. In a breathtaking conclusion to the book, this unique conjunction of the Sacred and the Pagan is shattered in the most dramatic way possible.

Whatever your New Year resolutions were, add another one to the list, but put it at the top. By fair means or foul, get hold of a copy of this book, switch the phone into answer mode, bolt the door and pretend there’s no-one at home while you are swept along by the brilliant writing. Oh, and a couple more things; if you thought that Sheelanagig was just a West Country folk band, you will be educated otherwise. And you’ll never look at a Morris dance team in quite the same way again.

All Of A Winter’s Night is published by Corvus, and is out on 5th January.

ON MY SHELF … Redmond, Rickman and Tully

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Highbridge, by Phil Redmond
To create one addictive TV soap might be considered just lucky. Creating two should evoke a few sharp intakes of breath. To be responsible for three…? Well. it ain’t gonna happen, is it? Yet it did, and with Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks under his creative belt, it was only a matter of time before write Phil Redmond (left) turned his hand to the crime fiction market. Set in the fictional town of Highbridge, Redmond spins a hypnotic yarn about two brothers who take different routes to avenge their sister’s death. Sean embeds himself in the cut-throat world of local politics where the law is ostensibly respected, but subverted in a hundred subtle ways. Joey goes Route One, and pursues his revenge within the criminal underworld where law and order are just random letters rearranged to make a word that no-one understands. Highbridge will be out in January, and you can pre-order here.

Down, But Not Out, by Gary Tulley
The first book in this series of crime novels set within the sweat and sawdust world of boxing was Seconds Out (March 2016) We were introduced to a gentleman – Paul Rossetti – who is described as “a plastic gangster”. The author (right) had a distinguished career as a coach and administrator in amateur boxing, but on retirement wrote two PI novels, Once Upon A Spook (2012) , and The Spook Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (2013). He now follows up Seconds Out with another saga involving Paul Rossetti and a boxer described as ‘his nemesis’ – Ronnie Callaghan. The story bobs and weaves its way through the murky and arcane world of men who try to beat the living daylights out of each other – and the criminal types who control them outside the ring. Down, But Not Out is available now, and is published by Matador.

All Of A Winter’s Night, by Phil Rickman
I make no apologies about naming this as my biggest up-and-coming release. I have been hooked by the Merrily Watkins novels since public library days, when I first discovered The Wine Of Angels in 1998. I believe Rickman to be one of our finest writers, with his unrivalled sense of landscape and history, and his ability to scare the pants of me without resorting to cheap shocks. Rickman is a modest man and may demur at my comparing him to Hardy in his awareness of the power of landscape, but he must put his hand up and acknowledge that he is very much the equal of the great M R James in the way he conjures up dread and menace using everyday objects and happenings. The Reverend Watkins, Rector of Ledwardine and Diocesan Deliverance Consultant returns in a wintry tale, where she must cope with the unwelcome convergence of a bleak funeral and a gangland shooting. Expect shivers up your spine, more peril for Merrily’s vulnerable daughter Jane, and a story that combines ancient menace, modern crime, and a totally believable cast of characters. All Of A Winter’s Night will be out on 5th January.