Devil's Moon

Brighton #4

by Peter Guttridge

Brighton’s murderous past and criminal present are intriguingly combined in this brand new series featuring some of the characters from the Brighton Trilogy 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 …

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Peter Guttridge is the Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at Southampton University and teaches creative writing. Between 1998 and 2002, he was the director of the Brighton Literature Festival. Since 1998, he has been the mystery reviewer for The Observer, one of Britain's most prestigious Sunday newspapers. He lives in Sussex on the edge of the South Downs National Park.

Reviews

[Tony Steinman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but too many angles crammed in

[Violet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it but skipped a lot of the dialogue where Watts was searching for info about his father. After all that filler, finally mystery solved with one abnormal family.