The Wine Of Angels

The Rev. Merrily Watkins had never wanted a picture-postcard parish - or a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she particularly wanted to walk straight into a local dispute over a controversial play about a strange seventeenth-century clergyman accused of witchcraft… a story that certain old-established families would rather remained obscured. But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets. A paradise of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. And also - as Merrily and her teenage daughter Jane discover - a village where horrific murder is a tradition that spans centuries. The Wine of Angels launches an atmospheric new series about a very singular woman facing the many faces of evil. It is a novel that foresees the sexual harassment of women priests ad confronts the most dramatic and controversial development in the Anglican Church since the Reformation.

'As if an episode of The Vicar of Dibley or The Archers had suddenly turned into Cracker.'

Sunday Times

'Woven through is the wonderful web of mysticism and the supernatural which we have come to expect. Rickman's strengths, an acute ear for dialogue and a talent for wickedly accurate character cameos, draw one into a story where human frailties and strengths are counterposed. The clever combination of modern idiom and the timeless echo of history leaps from every page. You are there with poor Merrily every step of the way.'

Daily Express

This was the point at which I'd got so fed up with being described as a horror writer that I decided to do some kind of Miss Marple thing with psychological overtones of Ruth Rendell (except that Ruth insists she doesn't believe in anything at all supernatural). In the end, I suppose, Wine didn't turn out so much different from the others. As usual, the supernatural is there but it doesn't actually resolve anything - I never was into the idea of dark, malevolent forces, tending to think they don't function too well without basically dark, malevolent people. So we're in the black and white timber-framed village of Ledwardine in the cider-apple area of Herefordshire. A little like Weobley or Pembridge, Eardisland or Dilwyn. Apples are fascinating, very mystical. In fact, an odd thing happened to me in an orchard while I was researching the book... but let's not get into that. This is an old-fashioned murder mystery, to which the ghost story is almost peripheral. The Wine of Angels introduces the Rev. Merrily Watkins, wry, mid-thirties, a little unsure of herself and her role, a smoker occasionally driven to mild blasphemy... especially by her 15 year-old daughter, Jane, who's kind of into paganism. It reintroduces one of my favourite Welsh Border archetypes, Gomer Parry, ex Crybbe. And there's Lol Robinson, inoffensive singer-songwriter and former psychiatric patient, who would like to know Merrily better. Anyway, when it was over I didn't want to say goodbye to Merrily. But how - realistically - could a country vicar repeatedly be involved in this kind of mayhem? Hmm....