The Cure of Souls (Reverend Merrily Watkins Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: Rickman Is a Master of Suspense
Review: I am a tremendous fan of the Merrily Watkins series. Rickman is a master at combining elements of mystery and suspense with horror and the supernatural. He is also simply a great story teller.

Rating:
Summary: It just doesn't stop...
Review: I don't know how many times I've started in on a promising series only for the quality of the writing and stories to dip quickly after the first book or two. Not so with this series. Rickman consistently turns out amazing stories with a cast of characters so realistic they could live nextdoor. He also has the extremely rare ability to write stories where the hinging point is religion--as all the Merrily Watkins books are--without using it as a pulpit to sway anyone, or to say that any one religion is better than the other. They are simply masterful stories and darn good reads.

Rating:
Summary: Not much of a cure....
Review: Rickman's fourth Merrily Watkins mystery (and ninth book overall) has our diocesian exorcist (or deliverance minister) struggling as always to deal with her life fighting the supernatural and the very real troubles of bringing up her sixteen year old, daughter, Jane, plus her own personal issues. From the start, the chain-smoking minister finds herself having to deal with a claimed case of demonic possession as a previously well brought up and God-fearing teenage girl, Amy Shelbourne, starts renouncing God and refusing to go to Church to the dismay of her devout foster parents. We are quickly given a reason as Amy claims (which we know is a lie from the opening prologue) that Jane forced her into a ouija board session and she met the spirit of her real mother, Justine.
Running concurrently is a plotline involving Lol Robinson (he who denies his true feelings for Merrily) who is back in the recording studios, down the road from Merrily, at Prof Levinson's request to record a new album. Meanwhile, in Knight's Frome we find the new-age squire, Adam Lake, rebuying all the land up that his ancestor lost under a curse. The story runs that if you see the ghost of centuries-ago murdered Lady of the Bines (whom Lol inadvertently runs into very early on) then your hop harvest will fail. Lake runs into a PR adversary, Gerard Stock, the son-in-law of the recently murdered Stewart who has inherited land that Lake wants to rebuy. As such a very neighbourly feud takes on a supernatural slant as Stock goes to the papers after the local vicar, Simon St John, refuses to perform an exorcism on the place that Stock, claims is haunted.
By the time we make it halfway through, Amy Shelbourne has attempted suicide and Merrily is called into Stock's house to perform the first exorcism (or 'Cure of Souls'). It is at this point the novel begins to move as Stock not only records Lol and Merrily's incursion but also his immediate brutal killing of his wife. Amy runs away and her father is forced to explain to Merrily how Amy's real mother was killed in a church whilst a 3-year old Amy watched from the altar. Suddenly it all becomes more chilling as Merrily confronts Layla Riddock and her stepfather. Meanwhile the, as yet unfathomably linked, second plot has Gerard Stock killing himself before we finally begin to piece behind the true mystery of the Lady of the Bines and an unknown murder in the 60s that is causing the haunting of the kiln by a succubus. In a strange twist it is actually Jane and Eirion who come back from Wales to move the entire story to its bloody denouement as we learn that our protagonists are capable of great character misjudgement and what appears to be truth is inevitably incorrect.
To be honest, this isn't Rickman's finest effort. I felt that the move towards a Merrily Watkins series has taken away the polished supernatural edge books like Crybbe and December possessed. The first half of this book is given over to establishing mystery of the intellectually confusing kind, rather than previous efforts which spent the first half ever so slowly building up a sense of creeping, chilly supernatural fear. Simply put, whilst you wouldn't read Crybbe on a dark, stormy night, you could quite cheerfully skim through this effort. Nevertheless, Rickman's currently the finest supernatural thriller writer out there right now and this is the kind of quality effort you'd expect.

Rating:
Summary: Rickman Is a Master of Suspense
Review: The Cure of Souls, Rickman's fourth novel featuring the Rev. Merrily Watkins, finds her settled, more or less, into her role as diocesan deliverance minister. But in spite of the experience she has gained, the job seems only to grow more difficult; this case in particular so blurs the line between good and evil that Merrily begins to doubt herself, uncertain how--or even whom--to free from spiritual bondage.
The diseased crops of the Frome Valley are an apt metaphor for the psychic condition of those now living there. Something is sucking the life out of not only the land but of the residents as well. What remains of the once flourishing valley draped in hop bines is now a rural waste-landscape.
The land's loss of vitality is painfully evident to Lol Robinson, Merrily's would-be lover, who is about to re-enter Merrily's life.
After going off to take courses in psychotherapy, Lol is led by his professor to the Frome Valley's legendary luthier, Al Boswell, from whom Lol learns not only about the region's gypsy heritage, but that the Romany ways still pervade the lives of those who live ... and die ... in there. And from this culture there comes a psychic adversary as mysterious as the Romany themselves.
Lol's close encounter with the legendary "Lady of the bines" leads him to the vicarage of Reverend Simon St. John and his wife, the intriguing Isabel. Simon's refusal to exorcise the possesed house belonging a local "entrepreneur" places the task in Merrily's hands as local exorcist. Merrily, Lol and Simon soon realize that it will take all three of them--and more--to deliver this town from the evil that plagues it.
In perfect contrast to the wilt and waste of the main setting is the continued flourishing of Merrily's "flower," her indomitable daughter Jane. Rickman's secondary plot, that of Jane's journey into young womanhood and her own spiritual and psychic quest, provides a wonderful parallel to the main storyline. And in a way that he does probably better than any other writer in the business, Rickman deftly weaves the threads of Jane's tale into the main textual fabric, adding to the narrative tension and the intrigue.
Phil Rickman's The Cure of Souls is a sophisticated blend--part ghost story, part detective story, part myth--that will not disappoint. He has an unerring ability to bring each character fully alive and make every scene in which he places them frighteningly believable. This book was just 'The Cure' this reader needed.

Rating:
Summary: Leave the lights on please...
Review: Wonderfull stuff as always! Rickman can scare the knickers off you using less blood and gore than you'd see in 7 minutes of the 6:00 o'clock news. I had to stop reading it for a few months (not that I WANTED to), but when I resumed, I read about two paragraphs and was right back into the thick of it, how often does that happen? Only with the finest of tales.
Excellent Story story line! His lean writing makes for a good read and you still see it all in your head.
Lol and Simon are back! Relive your school day fears, insecurities, and weird classmates. Wander around bleak countrysides with deja vu by your side. Learn about hops. Visit some gypsies. Remember losing your virginity, remember wanting to lose it. Get really really scared.
Feed the cat because you will be gone for awhile,You will be there!
I'd get posessed just to meet Merrily Watkins!