The Cure of Souls: A Merrily Watkins Mystery [Paperback]

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.

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.

Not having read all of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins stories it's a bit forward to say that The Cure of Souls is the best or the spookiest or any other such superlative. But rest assured, this one will magnetize you in spite of it's length as it draws you into an intense dissertation on the nature of evil as Merrily, still new to the role of deliverance minister (exorcist) confronts a darkness that confuses the innocent and the guilty, condemned to repeat itself like the hearth and field rituals that it imitates.

The pieces of this tale are complex. Merrily's daughter Jane falls in with a high school divining circle led by a wannabee gypsy witch, rich, spoiled, and to brash to realize the price of her own selfish manipulations. When Merrily herself tries tohelp on of the girls Jane's own actions cause Merrily's motives to be questioned. Then Merrily agrees to an exorcism that fails spectacularly with murder and death shortly to follow. She finds herself catapulted into a public role that could mean the loss of her ministry and all that she treasures. And Lol, the closest thing Merrily has to a romantic interest, finds himself in the same complex web when he sets out to help an old friend build a music studio in one of the old hop kilns that dot the Herefordshire countryside and runs into the echo of a legend of an older murder.

Rickman uses a rich pallet of local color to make this tale of parallel murders and possession to make this a tale something more than a murder mystery. Merrily's Herefordshire is caught in a conflict between the old traditions of hop farming and oncoming gentrification. Old money, the new rich and the simpler folk of town and country all participate in making this story as memorable for its characters as it is for the story itself. Merrily, Lol, and Jane are all at turning points in their lives, each facing an identity crisis of one sort or another, and the terrible mystery of an exorcism gone wrong brings each up short as they face their own lives.

If The Cure of Souls isn't one of Rickman's best, I'm not sure what would be. The author displays a rare sure hand in both character and narration. The story combines looming darkness with flashes of wry humor in a delicate balance that makes its 560 pages seem too short.