Swimming with the Dead

August 12, 2013
The occult collides with police procedure in Guttridge’s fragmented, patchwork fourth Brighton mystery (after 2011’s The Thing Itself). A huge wicker man is burning on the Brighton seaside. Performance art? Unfortunately no. There’s a body within the wicker frame, and Sarah Gilchrist, newly promoted to acting detective inspector, teams with young but highly knowledgeable Constable Bellamy Heap to find whodunit. Heap’s bottomless knowledge of pagan arcana comes into continual use as more perplexing events hit the town: a vicar has disappeared, his flat vandalized with a pentagram; a painting called The Devil’s Altar is stolen from the Brighton Museum; and satanic books are missing from the library. Routine questioning of eccentric locals finds a rich vein of New Age spirituality mixed with black magic. Meanwhile, former Chief Insp. Bob Watts begins a parallel investigation on his own and learns more about Templars, Walpurgisnacht, and toxic plants than he or the reader really wants to know.