The bloody trail leads to a remote village on the Welsh Border, and to people who know there are more crimes in heaven and earth than are dreamt of Meanwhile, journalist Grayle Underhill arrives from New York to search for her sister, who s become obsessed with the arcane mysteries of the Stone Age. But his neardeath experience means that Bobby Maiden may be the only person who can reach the Green Man, a serial killer the police don t even know exits a savage predator who haunts prehistoric stones and burial mounds in the belief that he is defending Britain s sacred heritage. When Maiden is revived after dying in a hit and run incident, his memories are not those of white lights and angelic music only of a place he has no wish to revisit ever. Bobby Maiden, possibly the only honest detective in a corrupt police division. Hailed as the British alternative to the X Files, Will Kingdom’s paranormal thrillers combine crime and the supernatural to electrifying effect. With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes it looks like a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins in an ancient community forced to untangle its own history against the swirling uncertainty of the future. Is it the fear of discovery or the kind of fear that she, of all people, could never disclose? One thing is clear: the last person who’s going to be welcome in that house is an exorcist. And his young wife is becoming conspicuously agitated. The atheist’s temporary home is close to the site. Meanwhile, archaeologists, assisted by Merrily’s teenage daughter, Jane, are at work in Coleman’s Meadow, unearthing an ancient row of standing stones which some people would rather stay buried.

Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. An aggressively atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, Rushdie style, into a secluded house just outside the village. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory.

December by Phil Rickman