About this item
As the shadow of World War II descends over Europe, Detective Inspector Thomas Lamb hunts for an elusive killer behind the veil of a seemingly charming English village. German bombers are arriving daily, seeking to crush England. But in a rural Hampshire village, things have remained fairly quiet -- until an elderly loner, Will Blackwell, is brutally murdered. The method of his killing bears the hallmarks of the traditional vanquishing of a witch, and indeed, local legend claims that as a boy, Blackwell encountered a ghostly black dog sent from the devil, who struck a bargain for Blackwell's soul. Not long after the murder, a young woman who is carrying the illegitimate child of a fighter pilot also is violently killed; then a local drunkard ends up in the race of an abandoned mill with the back of his head bashed in. As the Germans continue their relentless attack, Detective Inspector Thomas Lamb rushes to solve the crimes. Do the killer's motivations lie in the murky regions of the occult?
About the Author
I've always loved reading good mystery novels, especially those from the English masters -- Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha, Colin Dexter, Peter Robinson and others. I'm also a huge fan of the Norwegian crime novelist, Karin Fossum. Before turning to writing fiction with a vengeance, though, I was, for nearly thirty years, a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist. My work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, Baltimore Magazine, The Columbia Flier and Howard County Times. I have a Master's from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and have taught writing and journalism at Hopkins, Towson University, in Baltimore, and Sweet Briar College, in Virginia. I live in Columbia, Maryland, with my wife, Cindy, and our daughters, Anna and Lauren. We'd love to have a cat -- we love cats -- but we can't because Anna and I are allergic. So it goes.
