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This is a unique novel in the author's canon: while it deals with a number of matters such as sex, mortality and faith, the supernatural dominates this brilliant and hypnotic work. Maurice Allington, dissipated, cultivated, paradoxically engaging, is the modern landlord of a medieval coaching inn, The Green Man. As an old inn should, it has a persistent, long-quiescent ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a 17th-century practitioner of the black arts and a sexual deviant suspected of two hideous murders. Allington becomes the sole witness to the reappearance of Underhill in the hot summer of 1968, during which he has more mundane distractions: major staff crises, a withdrawn adolescent daughter, middle-aged hypochondria aggravated by twenty years of aggressive drinking, and a compulsion to arrange a romp with himself, his wife and his mistress. Finally, Allington is driven by a series of unpleasant incidents to bring about a climactic confrontation with the supernatural visitant. A cunning blend of terror, suspense, and humor, The Green Man is superb entertainment and a masterly example of the literature of the macabre.

"A splendid chiller, in the uncomplicated, old-fashioned sense....The dialogue is filled with humor and a chilling strangeness. Indeed, the success of this short novel depends very much upon the balance that Amis maintains between laughter and fear."

New York Times Book Review, 08/23/1970

"Frequently funny, tedious when the dialogue turns weighty, determinedly suave, and a shade too nimble in the plot."

Jonathan Yardley, New Republic, 09/19/1970

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