THE DEVIL IN BELLMINSTER

Holland’s first novel begins as unassumingly as its modest protagonist, Mr. Tuckworth, Vicar of 1830s Bellminster. But Holland casts off from Trollope territory with the vicar’s discovery of his sexton’s beheaded corpse. At first Tuckworth is jammed, forgotten, in a corner of the Mayor’s office while the more glamorous town leaders wrangle about the proper course of action to take. But he’s forced into a more active role when Detective Inspector Myles of Bow Street, arriving in Bellminster to investigate, is presented with another strange corpse: town drunk Josiah Mallard, stoned to death. On the strength of suborned testimony, Myles arrests Adam Black, the hulking, mentally deficient man who lived and worked together with his sister at Mallard’s house. Tuckworth tries to defend Adam from Myles and the locals anxious for a convenient solution. The murder of a prostitute clears the simpleton but deepens the mystery. And Tuckworth’s own ordeal is only beginning, for the killer takes to addressing him from the dark heights of his beloved cathedral, and the vicar realizes that he alone must confront the evil that walks in Bellminster, including the despair that is stalking him.

The progressive revelation of Tuckworth’s depths, together with a sympathetic feeling for the tensions of small-town life, compensate for the inevitable serial-killer clichés: an impressive debut.