The Old Religion

December 9, 2019
Tom Killgannon, the hero of this uneven gothic mystery from Waites (The Woman in Black: Angel of Death), has settled in St. Petroc, Cornwall, to try to shed a former life he led in another part of England. One stormy day, a troubled, frightened teenager, Lila, takes refuge in his house—she’s a runaway, hooked up with a community of surfers living in campers on a local beach. Despite Tom’s efforts to help her, she sneaks away with his coat containing his passport and ID—proof of his new identity that Tom is desperate to get back. The search for Lila takes Tom into the heart of a disturbing plan on the part of a man called Crow to restore St. Petroc to its former glory, using the old religion of the title, a kind of druidic paganism that Crow has convinced the town’s seemingly reasonable residents is the key to future prosperity. Set in a gray, forbidding landscape, this grim novel offers a vision of what rural England could become after the U.K. leaves the E.U. Unfortunately, neither Waites’s prose nor storytelling does justice to the potential of its harrowing premise. Agent: Jane Gregory, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.).

January 1, 2020
A college student has gone missing in Cornwall, England. The reason for his disappearance is a mystery to the young man himself, who is trapped underground, starving and injured. At the same time, locals in the shabby, depressing Cornwall town of St. Petroc are fighting for a new marina to be built in the area, hoping for the economic boost they need. How the two circumstances might be connected is up to former police officer Tom Killgannon to figure out. While he's bored and underemployed in a bar that hosts secretive community meetings about the marina, he's forced to become involved in the town's underworld when 17-year-old runaway Lila shows up at his home. Lila is connected to a commune that readers learn practices the old religion of the title?druidism?and aren't content to stick to the religion's hippier side. Waites (Bone Machine, 2007) is known for dark thrillers, a reputation he lives up to here. The brooding Killgannon will strike a chord with fans of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)