Witch Maker (A Chief Inspector Woodend Mystery, 11) - Hardcover

Spencer, Sally

3.8

119 ratings by Goodreads

9780727860705: Witch Maker (A Chief Inspector Woodend Mystery, 11)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727860704 ISBN 13: 9780727860705

Publisher: Severn House, 2004

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A village with a dark code for Woodend to crack
To be Witch Makers in the moorland village of Hallerton is both a great honour and a heavy burden. It is he who, after years of painstaking apprenticeship, constructs the effigy of Meg Ramsden - he who ties it to the stake and burns it before a bitterly jeering crowd. But this Witch Maker - only the twenty-fourth in the 450 years of the ceremony - never lives to witness his moment of triumph.
This Witch Maker is discovered tied to the Witching Post early one morning with a length of twine wrapped tightly around his neck. DCI Charlie Woodend prides himself on knowing how villages work - but has absolutely no idea at all what makes this one tick. Why do the villagers, who almost revered their Witch Maker, seem so unwilling to help the police? Why have there been so many suicides in this apparently sleepy hamlet? And why, when he has peeled away one level of secrets, does he find nothing underneath but an even deeper level?

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About the Author:

Spencer was born and brought up in Cheshier. She has been a teacher in England and Iran.

From Booklist:

When DCI Charlie Woodend and DS Monika Paniatowski are sent to the village of Hallerton to investigate a brutal murder, they walk into a nightmare. Hallerton is the home of the gruesome Witch Burning, which occurs every 20 years and re-enacts the death of suspected witch Meg Ramsden, burned at the stake in 1604. Hallerton even has its own Witch Maker, whose responsibility is to make Meg's effigy. The murder victim, Witch Maker Harry Dimdyke, has been garrotted and tied to the burning stake just days before the ceremony. Woodend and Paniatowski meet resistance at every turn of their investigation, and it's only when they link Dimdyke's killing with another murder that occurred at the last burning 20 years earlier that the case opens up. Spencer's Woodend series always features sharp procedural detail and suspenseful, well-developed story lines. Here she adds a surprise sending and a couple of quasi-Gothic elements-- the setting and the sense of dark foreboding. It all adds up to a first-rate addition to an entertaining series. Emily Melton
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