Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (UK 2012)

From the Publisher:
There were certain phrases you could feel, like fingers up your spine. Hattie Chancery's room. The possessive. Present tense. Oh God...
A crumbling hotel on the border of England and Wales. A suggestion of inherited evil, a strange love affair... and the long-disputed origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Fascinating for young Jane Watkins, flushed by the freedom of her first weekend job. But the sinister side becomes increasingly apparent to her mother, Merrily, diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Then come memories of a child-killer, blood in the fresh snow...

Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd. Corvus Books, ISBN: 9780857890146 (February, 2012), 624 p., £8.99.

Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (UK 2004)

From the Publisher:
At Stanner Hall, a Victorian mansion-turned-hotel, Ben Foley hosts murder-mystery weekends and strives to prove that his hotel is the house on which Arthur Conan Doyle based his immortal Baskerville Hall. 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 deaths that is far from fictional.

Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd. The Sixth Merrily Watkinks Mystery. Pan, ISBN: 0330490338 (October, 2004), 628 p., £6.99.

Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (UK 2004)

From the Publisher:
In a Victorian mansion turned hotel on the Welsh border, Ben Foley, a redundant TV drama producer, hosts unprofitable murder-mystery weekends and feeds his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskerville.

Local tradition argues that the origins of The Hound lie not on Dartmoor but in the Herefordshire legend of a black dog foreshadowing death in the Vaughan family. Young Jane Watkins, whose first weekend job is at the Stanner Hall Hotel, is intrigued. But Jane's mother, 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 medieval exorcism but with a chain of murders that is far from fictional.

Merrily Watkins, already dragged into the treacherous mire of spiritual healing, must now consider the possibility of inherited evil and the nature and validity of a lingering family curse.

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd is about sexual obsession, spiritual trickery and blood-betrayal. And, muffled under a shroud of snow... the dark side of the border.

Phil Rickman: The Prayer of the Night Shepherd. The Sixth Merrily Watkinks Mystery. Macmillan, ISBN: 0333908066 (April, 2004), 535 p., £16.99.