Customer Reviews

To Dream of the Dead

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The latest installment of the adventures of Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant (read exorcist) & parish priest for the village of Ledwardine, is a wonderful book.

Phil Rickman seems incapable of putting a foot wrong in this series. The characters are interesting, totally believable & varied, from Merrily herself to minor bit players, all fully realized & unerringly depicted.

Merrily's daughter Jane has developed convincingly through the series and is arguably the best creation of a teenaged girl in modern fiction. This book sees her struggling with issues that would be vividly familiar to this age group, all concerned with the transition to an independent life.

Her long term boyfriend Eirion is back, as is the complex musician Lol. The multi-layered plot vividly details the uneasy juxtaposition of "progressive" development which disenfranchises many of the long term residents of the area, and the workings of the human heart and spirit.

Rickman is honest and fearless in his examination of motivation and character, and of how struggling to do "the right thing" can make your life very difficult. The many facets of loneliness are a constant refrain in his books. Lol expresses this with his "Alien" sweatshirt & album, & in this book the detective Frannie Bliss - an outsider from Merseyside - finds himself on the outer from the Police force & his family.

Merrily is more of a traditional priest in "To Dream of the Dead", with the supernatural aspects of her job less intense. Rickman handles the supernatural elements of this series superbly & intelligently.

As always, music is an important background element, with the late Nick Drake an invisible presence throughout.

The complexity & richness of this series is amazing. Lesser books than "To Dream of the Dead" have won the Booker prize.

It's the week before Christmas, Ledwardine is threatened by flooding and a gruesome discovery is made at the old Blackfriars Monastery. The events that follow create a nightmarish advent for Merrily, Jane, Lol, Detective Frannie Bliss and the people living in Ledwardine. In his inimitable style, Phil Rickman once again delivers a tightly-woven tale of murder, greed, hate and religion gone wrong. While Bliss fights to find a cold-blooded murderer and save his career, Merrily fights to save the spiritual core of her parish -- and herself -- from a hateful attack. And the chaos created by those natural and human forces also wreak havoc in the personal lives of the characters we've grown to love.

While Rickman's latest offering is more of a detective story than a supernatural thriller, fans of "woo-woo" will not be disappointed. The supernatural element, though sparingly evidenced, proves crucial throughout.

I particulary loved To Dream of the Dead for the major role Jane and Bliss play in solving the crime. BIG surprises await readers at the end of this one. Put Dream on your Christmas list, if you can wait that long!

I love all the Merrily Watkins books and can't really add to the book reviews here except to say, did you know there are two albums, too? Songs from Lucy's Cottage and A Message from the Morning are CDs of character Lol Robinson's songs, lyrics by Phil Rickman and music by Allan Watson and Hazey Jane II. Readers of the Merrily Watkins novels will recognize Baker's Lament, Cure of Souls, Elgar, and Lucy's Song because snippets of Lol's lyrics appeared in the novels. But now the songs have been completed, and they're gorgeous. Lol was heavily influenced by Nick Drake and elements of Nick are interwoven. Lol spent his own time in the psych ward, hence Heavy Medication Day. Find info at Phil Rickman's website and Hazey Jane 2's myspace page. For all of us fans of the Merrily Watkins books, Lol lives! Added treats are Phil Rickman reading from Traherne, quotations from Leather's Folklore of Herefordshire, and the voice of Gomer Parry.

Once again, Phil Rickman has written an absorbing and intriguing mystery starring my favourite clergy person, Merrily Watkins and her irrepressible daughter Jane. I await each Phil Rickman book - whether Merrily Watkins or his other excellent novels - impatiently. Great plots, interesting history and folklore, and beautifully drawn characters.

This installment of Rickman's Merrily Watkins mystery series is as good as they come. Although the mysteries themselves are always intriguing, the real pleasure of these books is in the wonderfully drawn characters. Merrily, Lol, Jane, Frannie and the rest have all grown in complex and realistic ways over the course of the books, and it is a pleasure to take the journey with them.

I am very sad because I've caught up in the wonderful Merrily Watkins series, and will now have to wait for the next book to come out. I have so enjoyed this series, and Mr. Rickman's wonderful writing. This book is set in and around the village of Ledwardine where Merrily and her daughter Jane live. It is very insular because the small village is threatened with huge flooding so most of the action takes place right there with Merrily and Jane right in the thick of it, so to speak. The time is very close to Christmas. But this is unlike any Christmas suspense book I've ever read. These books are so full of wonderful characters, heart-stopping plots and very tricky mysteries, that I just can't put them down once begun. That and the inside glimpses of the occult make these books memorable. Merrily and Lol's relationship has moved ahead a bit in this one, and Jane has finally grown up! And there is lots of Frannie Bliss, who has always been a favourite character of mine. I love the echoes of Welsh history that are in every book. Rickman is very knowledgeable about Welsh border history. All of these things make Phil Rickman one of my very favourite authors, and helps to make this series unforgettable.

I just happened on a Phil Rickman Merrily Watkins mystery in Books on First in Dixon, IL, and I've been hooked ever since. I think I've read them all now. Merrily Watkins is just the kind of complicated and interesting woman I like to read about, and Rickman is one of those rare male authors who 'write' women well. These mysteries have the right blend of spookiness and spirituality to keep me reading the whole series. I particularly liked the backstory of Frannie Bliss in this one. I'm looking forward to more from this author.

I always eagerly await a new Phil Rickman book. His characters are varied, complex and likable, his plots entertaining, his mythology right on and he is an absolute master of atmosphere and nuance. Although his writing borders on dark fantasy, the spooky darkness of the situations, no matter how grisly the crimes involved, is saved from being depressing by the humor and humanity of the lady vicar who is the diocese exorcist, her relationship with her daughter the idealistic pagan, the haunted musician who is their friend and my particular favorite, Gomer the plant hire guy.

...so goes the old spiritual. And rain it does in the 10th Merrily Watkins novel set against the background of the great Herefordshire flood. As if the steadily increasing waters of the river threatening to engulf the town of Ledwardine weren't trouble enough, Merrily has to deal with the opposite ends of the Christian spectrum. On one hand is a famous, outspoken atheist and on the other is a fundamentalist who espouses the insidious teachings of American evangelists which are creeping into the UK via the internet (sorry British people, this is one import that you don't need.)

Part of the book is a police procedural that follows DI Frannie Bliss as he investigates a particularly gruesome murder reminiscent of the author's horror beginnings. At this point in his life his marriage and his career seem to be going down in flames. Frannie is a dedicated public servant and he doesn't deserve the treatment that he gets.

Merrily's daughter, Jane, finds the career that she has chosen jeopardized by a famously egotistical archeologist who has been chosen by the Council to lead the Coleman's hill project.

These are well drawn characters and we suffer with them as everything is made much worse by the constant, depressing rain that keeps swelling the rivers and dampening their spirits.

This is probably the best novel that Rickman has done in the series. The narrative flow pulls you through the story without a wasted moment. The only thing that slowed me down was the tendency to go back over particularly excellent passages just to see how they were done. That and, of course, the desire to stay in Merrily's world as long as possible.

All the events in the book come together in the dénouement which contains the multiple twists that we always can expect from this author. This book will leave you with the satisfaction of knowing that you have read a work of the highest quality written by a true literary craftsman.

This is by far my favorite of the Merrily Watkins mysteries, and that's saying something; I've loved them ever since I discovered them a couple of years ago.

All of the characters that are becoming familiar are back in this episode: besides Merrily, Jane, and Lol, we get Gomer (naturally), Frannie Bliss, Eirion, Annie Howe, Andy Mumford, Karen Dowell, Charlie Howe, the incomprable Sophie, a quick look at the Boswells, James Bull-Davies, and many of the other inhabitants of Ledwardine. Even Lucy Devenish, though deceased, plays a pivotal role . . .

Jane's passion is contagious, Bliss's anger righteous, and everything comes together during a rising flood that brings no one the Christmas they wanted. (Although, remember what the Stones said: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime . . . ")

Buy this book. It is worth the money and the time spent reading it.