Customer Reviews

The Witch's Familiar

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When Isobel Perkins was burned as a witch some four hundred years ago, she screamed curses at the aldermen responsible for hounding her, damning them and their offspring for eternity. A direct descendant of Isobel's, controversial author Joyce Regent, arrives to live in the witch's cottage to escape the attention of the press, much to the concern of the aldermen's present day heirs. Has she come to inflict the witch's threats?

Then the poison-pen warnings arrive, and it isn't long before Joyce's battered body is found in the woods. One of the frightened villagers who blames his lung cancer on the witch's curse becomes an obvious suspect, and the domineering new Superintendent Newton would like to see him convicted of the murder. But DCI Jim Ashworth is not so easily convinced, and his alternative line of inquiry brings him into conflict with his despised superior.

Sub-plots involving the relationship between Newton and his teenage son, and between the flirtatious DS Holly Bedford and an investigative journalist from the tabloid press are expertly woven into the main story-line. The whole adds up to a thoroughly entertaining novel which holds the attention from the first page to the last. An excellent debut novel from a writer to watch.