Overview

The legends and lore of medieval England seep into the present in a gothic mystery that ""builds splendidly to a terrifying climax: a great witch's brew"" (Southern Daily Echo). Canadian Polly Lestrange is the sole surviving relative of a woman who lies near death in the village of Denwich on the East Suffolk coast. Summoned to her great-aunt's bedside, Polly is overcome by the gloom of the imposing manor house set atop cliffs that are crumbling into the sea. Polly's unease grows when her great-aunt's housekeeper refuses to let her see the dying woman, keeping her secluded in a locked room. Then there's the portrait in the hallway of an ancestor who was burned as a witch, and looks remarkably like Polly. With secrets and superstitions swirling around the village, Polly's fear becomes all too real when she's nearly strangled to death in the family's mausoleum. When even the police can't penetrate the locals' conspiracy of silence, Polly learns that in a place rife with rumors of witchcraft-it's easy to get away with just about anything-even murder... ""Snappy whodunit."" -The Sunday Telegraph ""Gothic plethora of village witchery... a thoroughly red-herringed variation of what might have been."" -The Northern Echo ""Denouement on crumbling cliff-edge, off which an old graveyard is gradually discharging its burden of human bones into the sea. Not at night for this one."" -Yorkshire Evening Press ""Another excellent tale from Michael Butterworth. Plenty of tension, with grim happenings set on the more desolate part of the Suffolk coastline."" -Morning Star ""Mr. Butterworth weaves suspense and mystery throughout his book and then completely surprises his readers with a quite unexpected denouement."" -Newmarket Journal

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Michael Butterworth was born in Nottingham in 1924 and served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during World War II. After the war, he studied and taught art for some years. He turned from drawing children's comic strips to writing scripts for them, quickly graduating to an editorship. Ten years later, he was an editor of women's magazines. Later, he became a full-time writer, which he did with a pet mongoose on his knee. He also had a hawk, peacocks, swans, a Newfoundland dog the size of a donkey, and many cats. He passed away in 1986.

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