The Fever of the World: Merrily Watkins is back, in this chilling and transfixing mystery (Merrily Watkins Series Book 16)

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Until the moment of redemption, the act of divine intervention, which may be believed for a moment, before it is withdrawn beneath clouds of agnostic unknowing. The series focuses on Merrily Watkins, a pretty, middle aged deliverance minister for the diocese of Hereford-shire and the Church of England. Deliverance is merely a diplomatic term that hides her true vocation – she is the church sponsored exorcist, the only female one in a long time. A single mother, she spends most of her time engaged in verbal jousts with her daughter Jane and brooding over her love affair with an ageing musician with severe agoraphobia – Lol Robinson – while juggling her night job – offering spiritual succor to the residents of a countryside that hides several legends (some not so pleasant) under its innocent green facade. The first book The Wine of Angels tells of Merrily and her daughter, Jane arriving in the village of Ledwardine. Merrily starts her job witnessing a suicide in the Orchard which becomes central to the story. As Merrily struggles with the pressures of her new job she also struggles as to whether to let a controversial play be performed in the church. The play threatens to unearth long held secrets from families in the village. When one of Jane's friends disappears the stage is set for an explosive evening. There are twelve other Merrily novels after this one. By the conclusion of this one, I can see her being one of the fixtures here, whilst I sit with a warming drink (perhaps mulled cider!) near to the fire, but also glancing into those shadows in the corner – just in case...

ITV announces superb lead cast for Midwinter of the Spirit". www.itv.com (Press release). 7 April 2015. Archived from the original on 10 April 2015 . Retrieved 3 October 2019. I think I'm definitely not the target audience for murder mystery 😆 I seem to not really care about, and have very little interest in, who dunnit 😆 I notice instead that I'm much more interested in characters, plot, content... and that there has to be something other than the kinda main point for me to be reading it (in this instance Wales initially... tho I'd heard there might be some Druids too 😉)as I let the novel settle over a few days after reading it, I noticed that this aspect of it left me feeling abit 'unclean'... and like I'd kinda inadvertently wandered into a room where someone was screening some really dodgy porn 😕😬🤢 Then a mysterious crime was thrown into the mix and Merrily Watkins realized that she had no real chance of attaining the peace of mind she sought. the novel contains ALOT of sexual objectification of women, of Merrily esp overtly. while this is positioned as creepy, it was also abit creepy in itself and I felt plays right into that kinda shit 😕😬 I just watched the new TV series based on these books, Midwinter of the Spirit, and it was not half bad. Anna Maxwell Martin does a good job as Merrily, even though she got rather too hysterical at times; in the books Merrily doesn’t go much past frazzled.

The paranormal aspects are weaker here than in the last book. There is little more than a sense of the lingering evil spirit of West possibly infecting/possessing people and places. At a whim and because it came up in a group discussion, I decided this might make for good reading this time of year. Not that this book is overpowered by what I call the woo-woo factor, but there are plenty of eerie, mystical moments that helped me decide to add it to the Halloween book list.

Now… could this have been because they’d recognised its obvious merits… or because the more expendable Midwinter would now go up against Episode 3 of what would be the year’s most successful (10 million viewers) BBC drama, Doctor Foster, saving the costly Unforgotten from the embarrassing possibility of, er, being rapidly forgotten? As Merrily struggles to find her feet in the parish (and the conservative parishioners adjust to a woman priest) there is scandal, political shenanigans and a definite sense of unease. For there seems to be something going on in the vicarage and the Apple Tree Man seems to be on the rise....