AustLit

'It is 1974 and Detective Inspector Briony Williams, with her trademark directness and impatience with small talk, has just started a new job with the Thames Valley Police in Oxford.Briony and her team are called out to investigate the murder of a 17-year-old girl in whose hand she finds a stone carved with an ancient cryptic message that says 'the busie fiend control'. Convinced she has encountered no ordinary domestic crime, Briony finds herself in a world of vengeful gods, devilish creatures in search of prey, and curses of the evil eye.A serial killer is roaming the prehistoric landscapes of the White Horse Vale, inspired by local druid folklore about a demonic supernatural Visitor. The perpetrator is violently and systematically murdering people, the victims restrained or held down and killed with heavy blows from all angles.There are psychic girls, druid witches, and maybe even horned goats sitting on altars wearing fur-edged capes. Or are there? Briony, in her search for scientific evidence, needs to steer a dangerous course between rationality and superstition during the autumn equinox, when the spirits are said to wander between worlds.' (Publication summary)