The late Phil Rickman’s genius was to blend intriguing crime mysteries with with events that tapped into our sense of unease about the Unexplained, and I use the upper case with good reason. Here, in the final Merrily Watkins novel,a young multi million pound lottery winner is found shot dead in a field beside his Purdy shotgun, but there is more – so much more- going on.
I don’t know if Phil was religious, but he certainly knew so much about religion. Here, veteran exorcist Huw Owen, driven to distraction by the anaemic, lanyard-wearing leadership of the corporate Church of England, is about to throw in the towel, until he is distracted by a former colleague’s description of a frightening experience in the church at Clodock, allegedly built on the tomb of a murdered Dark Ages king, Clydawg. He visits his former mentee, Rev Merrily Watkins, vicar of Leintwardine, and responsible for exorcism in the diocese of Hereford. Naturally, given the state of the church’s corporate image, she is formally titled ‘Deliverance Consultant’
Longstanding readers of the series will know that the churches and chapels of Rickman’s border region are often deeply sinister places with tangible links to a pagan past, for example the celebrated carvings at St Mary and David church in Kilpeck, which featured prominently in All of a Winter’s Night.
The lottery winner – Eddy Davies – had bought a local farm, and had renovated the collection of neglected buildings. In one lived a young woman called Autumn Wise, whose parents had not long since been killed in an horrific car crash. We learn that Autumn is obsessed with the past and, in particular, the part played in folklore by Corvus Carone.
On a more practical and immediate level, when the police arrived at the farm following the discovery of Eddy’s body, Autumn was found in the farmhouse, cradling a shotgun. Autumn’s cottage was known as The Old Dairy, and it was there, centuries earlier that a man poisoned his wife in order to be with his young lover. The killer and his girlfriend were subsequently hanged outside Hereford gaol.
Across the series, which began in 1998 with The Wine of Angels, Merrily has tended not to see spirits or apparitions, but rather senses them, and believes that other people can see them. Here, when she visits The Old Dairy she actually witnesses something which shakes her to the core. The killer of Eddy Davis is eventually unmasked, but with little intervention in this case from spiritual forces. Rather, it is the intuition and hard work of the police in Hereford that close the case.
Phil Rickman died on 29th October 2024, therefore this is valete to what we might call the Merrily Watkins repertory company. There will be no more Gomer Parry, the aged digger driver, who acted like a one-man Greek Chorus throughout the series; no more Frannie Bliss the canny Scouse copper from Hereford; no more of Merrily’s quixotic daughter Jane, and her complex relationship with boyfriend Eiron; and no more Lol Robinson, the tortured singer songwriter and Merrily’s not-so-secret boyfriend. The Echo of Crows is a magnificent end to a much-loved series, and will be published by Corvus on 6th November. If you click the author image on the left, it will link to other reviews and features on the series.
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