Witchcraft, the Assistant Chief Constable said.

I beg your pardon?

A witches’ coven in Marldale.

The tiny village of Upper Marldale is being overwhelmed-by a mischievous coven of witches. Neither believers nor non-believers can explain why the church clock winds itself up without assistance, why a row of winter cabbages is suddenly struck down in the night, or why not one cat in the village will venture forth after dusk. Marldale is the territory of the deceptively brilliant Inspector Jack Mosley, and his exasperated superiors wish he would get on with solving these nagging little incidents. But nagging soon becomes nightmarish when a sculptor is found hanging from her ceiling beam. A whiff of local corruption tickles Mosley’s nose, and he and his sidekick set off into the bracing northern air to seek the reasons and parties behind both the supernatural and the homicidal.

John Greenwood is the pseudonym of John Buxton Hilton, writer of both the Inspector Simon Kenworthy and Inspector Thomas Brunt series.