Buried Fire

With its strong sense of place and its powerful atavistic resonances, this novel explores how the eruption of long-buried forces of evil affects the relationships between two brothers, their older sister and the English village community of which they are part. The tensions and disturbances which fill the boys’ lives following their vicar’s discovery of the partial remains of an ancient cross are described in vivid and haunting detail, to the extent that (rather like the vicar at one point) the reader ‘experiences the difficulty of reconciling the ordinary appearance of things’ with the darkness under them. Part detective story, part psychological thriller, this is a genuinely chilling novel, slightly weakened by occasional lapses into over-writing.