The Witch Maker

A village with a dark code for Woodend to crack

To be Witch Makers in the moorland village of Hallerton is both a great honour and a heavy burden. It is he who, after years of painstaking apprenticeship, constructs the effigy of Meg Ramsden - he who ties it to the stake and burns it before a bitterly jeering crowd. But this Witch Maker - only the twenty-fourth in the 450 years of the ceremony - never lives to witness his moment of triumph.

This Witch Maker is discovered tied to the Witching Post early one morning with a length of twine wrapped tightly around his neck. DCI Charlie Woodend prides himself on knowing how villages work - but has absolutely no idea at all what makes this one tick. Why do the villagers, who almost revered their Witch Maker, seem so unwilling to help the police? Why have there been so many suicides in this apparently sleepy hamlet? And why, when he has peeled away one level of secrets, does he find nothing underneath but an even deeper level?