A Crown of Lights (Merrily Watkins Mysteries) - Softcover

Here in Britain, there's a very long-established tradition of exorcism, but it's been changing recently. Exorcists -and there's one in every diocese- are now known as Deliverance ministers or consultants. Their job is to advise the regular clergy on all aspects of possible psychic disturbance: ghostly and poltergeist phenomena, negative spiritual practices and, very occasionally, possession.

It's a risky and controversial occupation- especially for a woman.

Merrily Watkins is a widow in her mid-to-late thirties, she's deeply insecure, often paranoid about some of the things she's called on to do, would hate ever to be thought pious and.. oh yes, she has a volatile teenage daughter, Jane, who is more interested in paganism.

Merrily is vicar of a rural parish in Herefordshire, on the Welsh Border, and her Deliverance work is run from an office near Hereford Cathedral.

In her job -as with a number of the exorcists I've talked to in the course of continuing research- Merrily is frequently involved in police investigations. So this series is, essentially, crime. Most of the crime is very dark, sometimes a little nightmarish.

Not horror, though, and definitely not fantasy- even if the element of mystery sometimes exists on, shall we say, more than one level..?