The Death Pit - Hardcover

Strong, Tony

3.43

229 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385333153 ISBN 13: 9780385333153

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1999

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The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle called The Poison Tree, Tony Strong's first novel, "a perversely compelling upscale erotic thriller, a victory for the guilty pleasure." Now Strong returns with this exquisite, finely wrought novel of suspense that interweaves a historical mystery with a ghastly contemporary crime.

Scholar Terry Williams plans to go to Babcock Castle in Inverness, Scotland, with one goal in mind: to finish her research on Catherine McCulloch, a 17th-century woman accused of "congress with the devil" and burned at the stake as a witch during Scotland's notorious witch trials, which darkly mirrored those in Salem, Massachusetts, in their ferocity and scope. When Terry arrives, however, she discovers a town obsessed with a more recent death. The dismembered body of a beautiful young woman, Donna Fairhead, has been found on a farm near Babcock. When she hears rumors that Donna was a part of Nineveh, a Wiccan coven, only Terry is able to see the grim connection to Catherine's death almost three hundred years earlier.

As Terry continues her work, she discovers both a town filled with secrets and lies and a truth left buried in Catherine's yellowed letters and the mysterious Book of Shadows. It soon becomes clear that only Terry understands the dimensions of the crimes that have occurred and--unless the puzzle is unraveled in time--are about to happen again.

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Review:

As he did so well in his first thriller, The Poison Tree, British writer Tony Strong again takes us into a closed-off world and exposes its most private secrets in his second novel, The Death Pit. Even though the Scottish town of Inverness seems a long way from the rarified literary circles of Oxford (where the first story takes place), both are small-town environments that engender gossip and illicit goings-on.

A flourishing modern coven of witches seems a natural feature of the Scottish landscape--especially since nearby Babcock Castle once was the scene of a notorious 17th-century trial and the burning at the stake of Catherine McCulloch, a woman accused of witchcraft. But when the body of one of the coven members is found dismembered in a foul pit where diseased pigs are discarded, some of the residents blame the witches and take violent action against them.

Terry Williams, a Ph.D. candidate, has come to Babcock Castle to study McCullogh's papers and finds herself caught up in the mystery when she discovers a link between the past and the present. Strong is a sly writer who knows how to create sympathetic, believable characters and place them in a tightly-controlled atmosphere in which the air is charged with sex and danger. --Dick Adler

From the Back Cover:

"Quick and engaging...A book that's hard to put down."
--Time Out New York,

"Engrossing entertainment."
--Library Journal

"Exciting...An invigorating novel...A wonderful amateur sleuth tale with elements of a historical mystery...Tony Strong makes a strong case that he is heading to the top."
--Harriet Klausner, Midwest Book Reviews
Don't miss Tony Strong's debut novel

The Poison Tree

"A perversely compelling upscale erotic thriller, a victory for the guilty pleasure."
--San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

"Witty, assured and clever...an accomplished literary thriller."
--Cosmopolitan
Available from Dell

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