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Product Description
Scholar Terry Williams has come to Scotland to study the life of Catherine McCulloch, a 17th-century woman accused of "congress with the devil" and burned at the stake as a witch. But at the moment Terry arrives in Inverness, another killing has been uncovered: the dismembered body of a beautiful young woman found at a nearby farm.
As police descend on the remote town, Terry digs into the past, uncovering a grim connection to Catherine McCulloch's death three hundred years before. And when a local group of partner-swapping Wiccans is suspected of murder--and more--the two cases come crashing together. Suddenly, in this rural corner of Scotland, Terry finds herself making friends, lovers, and enemies--because of who she is, because of what she wants, because of what she knows about a killer's twisted mind....
Amazon.com Review
As he did so well in his first thriller, The Poison Tree, British writer Tony Strong again takes us into a closed-off world and exposes its most private secrets in his second novel, The Death Pit. Even though the Scottish town of Inverness seems a long way from the rarified literary circles of Oxford (where the first story takes place), both are small-town environments that engender gossip and illicit goings-on.
A flourishing modern coven of witches seems a natural feature of the Scottish landscape--especially since nearby Babcock Castle once was the scene of a notorious 17th-century trial and the burning at the stake of Catherine McCulloch, a woman accused of witchcraft. But when the body of one of the coven members is found dismembered in a foul pit where diseased pigs are discarded, some of the residents blame the witches and take violent action against them. Terry Williams, a Ph.D. candidate, has come to Babcock Castle to study McCullogh's papers and finds herself caught up in the mystery when she discovers a link between the past and the present. Strong is a sly writer who knows how to create sympathetic, believable characters and place them in a tightly-controlled atmosphere in which the air is charged with sex and danger. --Dick Adler
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