The Lamp of the Wicked

Merrily Watkins, Book 5

By: Phil Rickman

Narrated by: Emma Powell

The fifth and most devastating Merrily Watkins mystery takes Phil Rickman's endearingly fallible heroine from the wilder shores of millennial spirituality to the darkest hinterland of human depravity.

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?

©2003 Phil Rickman (P)2006 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Critic reviews

"Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman." (Guardian)

"[T]he research is impeccable...[an] enthralling novel." (Tribune)

"Terrific." (The Times)