The Master House, close to the Welsh border, is medieval and slowly falling into ruins. Now the house and its surrounding land have been sold to the Duchy of Cornwall. But the Duchy''s plans to renovate the house and its outbuildings are frustrated when the specialist builder refuses to work there. ''This is a place,'' he tells the Prince''s land-steward, ''that doesn''t want to be restored.''Directed by the Bishop of Hereford to investigate, deliverance consultant Merrily Watkins discovers ancient connections between the house and the nearby church, built by the Knights Templar whose shadow still envelopes isolated Garway Hill and its scattered communities. Why did all the local inns have astrological names? What deep history lies behind the vicious feud between two local families? And what happened here to intimidate even the great Edwardian ghost-story writer M R James? When Merrily learns that she - and even her daughter, Jane - are under surveillance by the security services, she''s ready to quit. But a sudden death changes everything, and she returns to Garway to uncover fibres of fear and hatred stitched into history and now insidiously twisted in the corridors - and the cloisters - of power.

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife... and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police ask: is it a ritual killing, a gangland disposal or a cry of outrage? As Merrily and the police follow separate paths towards the truth, Merrily''s teenage daughter, Jane, faces the consequences of her own obsession with a possibly prehistoric site in their home village of Ledwardine. Until, on a night of frenzied violence, in a place at the centre of an ancient, universal mystery, the final, shocking connections are made.

A rainy night in the cathedral city of Hereford. A grisly murder is linked by DI Francis Bliss with the campaign to preserve an ancient ritual site. And then Bliss is sidelined by his boss. What''s going on?In the village of Ledwardine, Merrily Watkins stands between an extreme fundamentalist Christian and an atheist writer known as ''The Devil''s Spin Doctor''. Tensions are rising… and so is the river. Soon Ledwardine will be isolated by floods, cut off with a killer inside - a new kind of killer for a cold new age.

The Master House, close to the Welsh border, is medieval and slowly falling into ruins. Now the house and its surrounding land have been sold to the Duchy of Cornwall. But the Duchy''s plans to renovate the house and its outbuildings are frustrated when the specialist builder refuses to work there. ''This is a place,'' he tells the Prince''s land-steward, ''that doesn''t want to be restored.''Directed by the Bishop of Hereford to investigate, deliverance consultant Merrily Watkins discovers ancient connections between the house and the nearby church, built by the Knights Templar whose shadow still envelopes isolated Garway Hill and its scattered communities. Why did all the local inns have astrological names? What deep history lies behind the vicious feud between two local families? And what happened here to intimidate even the great Edwardian ghost-story writer M R James? When Merrily learns that she - and even her daughter, Jane - are under surveillance by the security services, she''s ready to quit. But a sudden death changes everything, and she returns to Garway to uncover fibres of fear and hatred stitched into history and now insidiously twisted in the corridors - and the cloisters - of power.

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife... and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police ask: is it a ritual killing, a gangland disposal or a cry of outrage? As Merrily and the police follow separate paths towards the truth, Merrily''s teenage daughter, Jane, faces the consequences of her own obsession with a possibly prehistoric site in their home village of Ledwardine. Until, on a night of frenzied violence, in a place at the centre of an ancient, universal mystery, the final, shocking connections are made.

A rainy night in the cathedral city of Hereford. A grisly murder is linked by DI Francis Bliss with the campaign to preserve an ancient ritual site. And then Bliss is sidelined by his boss. What''s going on?In the village of Ledwardine, Merrily Watkins stands between an extreme fundamentalist Christian and an atheist writer known as ''The Devil''s Spin Doctor''. Tensions are rising… and so is the river. Soon Ledwardine will be isolated by floods, cut off with a killer inside - a new kind of killer for a cold new age.