Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

The Blurb:
The second novel from the Costa winning and bestselling author of The Loney

In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea,
The Devil he jumped from me to thee.
And only when the Devil had gone,
Did I know that he and I’d been one . . .

Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Very little changes in the Endlands, but this year, his grandfather – the Gaffer – has died and John’s new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.

Each year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper, but also through the remembrance of tales and timeless communal rituals, which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. But as the farmers of the Endlands bury the Gaffer, and prepare to gather the sheep, they begin to wonder whether they’ve let the Devil in after all . . .

My thoughts:

There is a lot to admire about this book and oh how close I came to loving it.

The author provides a wonderfully descriptive prose that carries you along seamlessly whilst providing a great atmosphere to the main character of the book, the landscape of the Yorkshire/Lancashire dales – the Endlands – themselves.

The characters of the novel, together with their backgrounds and the history of their little slice of the earth, are fairly thrown at the reader but it doesn’t take long to get to grips with the author’s style. It could be argued there is a slight lack of warmth to them but when you accept them as essentially being products of the landscape, it is easily forgiven.

As you would expect from the author of The Loney, Devil’s Day is a horror, and a sense of dread is ratcheted up wonderfully as you progress through this relatively short novel.

Unfortunately, that is where the positives end. During the whole novel I was imagining what terrible thing could befall the villagers and would simultaneously move me from a sense of tension to one of fear. Nothing came. There was no real pay-off to any of the good work put in by the author and as such I was still waiting when I turned and subsequently finished the last page.

If you are a horror aficionado – or just enjoy good writing – then you may very well enjoy this – I would probably suggest reading The Loney first however and deciding if you like the author’s style. If you are just after a properly scary book for Halloween, this may not be the one for you.

Buy it here

Many thanks to John Murray Press via Netgalley for providing an Advanced Reading Copy in return for an honest review.

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The Beer Accompaniment:

The book is set in an area rich with brewing tradition which offers a plethora of choice for an accompanying drink.

One very pleasant beer from nearby Pendle is Moorhouse’s Blond Witch, or of course there is the ever excellent Black Sheep ale. Whilst I could be accused of lacking imagination on this selection however, with so many references to the owd fella, it really put me in the mood for the classic Old Peculiar by Theakstons Brewery. A wonderfully distinctive dark beer with a nutty  taste with subtle fruit background very much its own. If you haven’t tried it then a deep dark autumn is the perfect time.