The Devils Beat

An extraordinary novel -- Picnic at Hanging Rock meets Howard's End meet The Crucible.
 
It is surely a simple case of hysteria. Four young women allegedly witness a terrifying apparition while walking in the woods. Has the devil really revealed himself to them? Are they genuine victims of demonic possession? Or, as most suspect, is their purpose in claiming all of this considerably more prosaic? The eyes of the country turn to a small Nottinghamshire town, where an inquiry is to be held. Everyone there is living through hard, uncertain times. The king is recently dead. It is a new century -- a new world looking to the future. But here, in the ancient heart of England, an old beast stirs.
 
Four men must examine the substance of the girls' tales and decide their fate: a minister, a doctor, a magistrate, and Merritt, an investigator -- a seemingly perfect blend of the rational, the sacred and the judicial. And yet, as the feverish excitement all around them grows ever more widespread and infectious, there is both doubt and conflict among the members of this panel.
 
The Devil's Beat explores the unforeseeable and unstoppable outcome of this inquiry -- an alarming and unsettling time during which the whole of that small world seems in turmoil as one after another hitherto dependable natural checks and balances, beliefs and superstitions are challenged and then lost.

ROBERT EDRIC was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (1985 James Tait Black Prize winner), A New Ice Age (1986 runner-up for the 1986 Guardian Fiction Prize), The Book of the Heathen (shortlisted for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and In Zodiac Light, which was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010. He lives in Yorkshire.