Devil's Day
From the Costa winning and bestselling author of The Loney
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'The new master of menace' Sunday Times
A blizzard a century ago has passed into fable in the Endlands. Trapped by the snow, the residents of the valley found themselves at the mercy of the Devil, who brought death and destruction before being driven back to the moors.
Now, the three farming families of the Endlands face a new test. The patriarch of the community, the Gaffer, has died and his grandson, John Pentecost, must decide if he will return and work the land in his grandfather's stead. He feels the pull of duty, loyalty and tradition: obligations that his pregnant wife, Kat, finds hard to understand as an outsider. And as the celebrations of the Devil's exile draw near, she realises that there is a darkness in this place which cannot be repelled.
BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, METRO AND MAIL ON SUNDAY
'A work of goose-flesh eeriness' The Spectator
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Acentury-old folk legend that the devil came down one autumn to the English sheep-farming community known as the Endlands and surreptitiously infected everyone he came into contact with before being driven out colors the haunting events of this masterly thriller from Hurley (The Loney). In contemporary times, schoolteacher John Pentecost returns from Suffolk to his family's Endlands farm with his wife, Kat, to attend the funeral of his grandfather and announce the impending birth of their first child. Almost immediately, they step into a mire of ominous portents: someone recently set fire to the nearby forest, animals are being killed, disembodied voices are heard on the moors, and one of the residents is mysteriously missing. Matters come to a head on Devil's Day, celebrated before the annual gathering of the sheep, when the locals ritually give the devil his due and the border between superstitions and genuinely uncanny events wears perilously thin. Hurley keeps the explanations for what occurs deliciously ambiguous, filtering discoveries through John, who, as he selectively relates past memories to present happenings, reveals himself to be a less-than-forthcoming narrator at best. The result is an intensely suspenseful tale memorable for what it says about unshakable traditions that are bred in the bone.
