The Devil's Moon

The Brighton series continues and “takes a turn towards the occult” with “well-wrought prose, an appealing new character . . . and a deadly climax” (Booklist).
 
Something strange is in the Brighton air. Everywhere newly-promoted Sarah Gilchrist looks, unsettling things are happening. A Wicker Man is burned on the beach at dawn with a body inside; a painting titled The Devil’s Altar is stolen from the Brighton Museum; a vicar who casts out demons goes missing; and a rare medieval manuscript of the occult Key of Solomon is stolen from the Jubilee Library.
 
Then Gilchrist’s flatmate, Kate Simpson, discovers that acts of sacrilege and grave robbing have been routinely taking place in Brighton and the surrounding villages. And ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts is puzzling over inscriptions in his late father’s books. Specifically, books by occult writers Dennis Wheatley, Colin Pearson—and the feared Aleister Crowley, cremated in Brighton in 1947.
 
Old Religion and New Age collide and the body count mounts as the Devil’s Moon slowly rises . . .
 
“Guttridge’s fourth dispatch from Brighton features many of the same characters as the first three but is more cerebral and slower paced. In its own different way, however, it’s just as literate and exciting.” —Kirkus Reviews