Merrily
Watkins
late thirties,
single mum,
parish priest...
....if this makes the books sound cosy,
they are a long way from that... A haunting quality
beyond crime fiction... rich in atmosphere and practically unique...’
Russell James,
Great British Fictional Detectives (2009)
‘Tough-minded, atmospheric mystery... with particularly sharp scene-
setting.’
Barry Forshaw,
The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction
‘FIRST CLASS’ ‘FIRST RATE’ ‘WONDERFUL’ ‘TERRIFIC’
The Guardian Daily Mail Daily Express The Times
PHIL RICKMAN
Merrily: the history.
Merrily is my attempt to do something different, because
writers should. If you don’t, it’s just a job.
So far, I haven’t been able to put a name to this exploratory
sub-genre of crime. ‘Spiritual procedural’ was an early
thought, but that suggests I’m some kind of evangelical or
that I’m writing (God forbid) ‘clerical mysteries.’
I’m not. Essentially, these are crime novels seen from a
different perspective. Crimes can be explained. Other
elements... maybe not. And I’m not trying to tell you what
to believe because I’m not sure what I believe.
It all started with The Wine of Angels, which is not really
representative of the rest of the series. It began as a
standalone, and Merrily Watkins wasn’t even going to be
the main character. It was just that I had a story in
need of a woman vicar.
I knew very little about vicars or how they worked. The last
thing I wanted was to write series about one. I’m not
much of a churchgoer... not when there’s a service on,
anyway. But suddenly there she was, and I realised what a risky,
uncertain occupation she’d taken on.
To be quite honest, at first, what I was looking for was a
book to get me off the horror shelves. Horror was becoming
a failing genre and leaning too far towards fantasy. I didn’t
want to go there. I wanted to examine the reality of
paranormal experience, (which is not invariably scary) and
I wanted to do this against an authentic background.
So while Wine is the first book to feature Merrily Watkins,
her determinedly pagan daughter, Jane, and the damaged
musician, Lol Robinson, it isn’t really part of the series. It’s
a prequel that just happened to get written first, and if you
don’t like it that doesn’t mean you won’t like the others.
It was only in the second Merrily novel that it started
coming together. Midwinter of the Spirit is a long way from
cosy and set the pattern for the rest.
Merrily Watkins has been appointed Deliverance Consultant,
or Advisor on the Paranormal, for the Diocese of Hereford.
This is a real job; there’s at least one in every diocese in
the UK. They work with psychiatrists, social workers... and
also the police (inevitably, in this series, this is the aspect
of the job that predominates.)
And their own beliefs are often tested. Which is what I
wanted. There are few certainties in this series. The borderline
between psychology and the unexplained is laid out in
barbed wire.
After eleven novels, it still pulls me back.
