mysteries

Miss Howatch's Wales-based coven is cosy indeed; the attendants of that oddly magnetic young man, Tristan Poole, are middle-aged and anxious to please, although they're apt to foul up their assignments. The group inhabits the Court of Walter Colwyn under the guise of a natural foods society. Poole is pretty much in control of Walter and the assorted relatives that flock in for one reason or another. There are two murders by possessed animals, a drugged bride and a Lammas whoopla is underway when a child sends Poole's possessor off in a puff of brimstone. Just the right breezy tone for this kind of amusement which zips along like the Old Harry.

The Devil on Lammas Night is something else again -- a romantic suspense thriller with more than a touch of the supernatural. Susan Howatch had been known to me for a good many years as someone who wrote books my mother liked to read for relaxation, until I happened on her Starbridge series and the three related books that followed it (they deal with factions in the Church of England and the personalities of various adherents, and if you think this sounds dull, all I can say is they kept me reading feverishly till the end.) In The Devil on Lammas Night, I saw inklings of Howatch's interest in the problem of evil and her belief in its supernatural existence. ( )