The crime writing community is poorer today and for many days to come after the loss of Phil Rickman, creator of Merrily Watkins, parish vicar, diocesan exorcist (they call them deliverance ministers these days) and investigator of crimes with an element of the weird and wonderful.
The Merrily series runs to sixteen titles, with a seventeenth manuscript delivered and scheduled for publication in 2025. Less well known but equally rich in those weird and wonderful criminal doings are his five standalones, two mini-series and two books for older children. How he found time for any of them while he was being a respected journalist and hosting a highly successful regular radio show is a mystery that will now never be solved.
A Lancastrian by birth, since the 1970s Rickman had made his home in the Welsh Marches with his wife Carol, a fellow journalist, whom he credited in every book as his first reader and toughest editor. He loved the area for its connections with the past and the air of mystery which pervades many aspects of life there and was fascinated by the thin veil which separates the known world from the much greater unknown. I once saw him change most of the sceptical minds in a festival audience when he first asked who did and didn’t believe in ghosts, and who wasn’t sure, then told a story from his own experience and asked the same question again.
The key themes Rickman set out to illustrate every time he put fingers to keyboard were there are more things in heaven and earth..., followed closely by don’t mess with what you don’t understand. Mostly it was something malign and uninvited interfering with ordinary life; on one occasion unscrupulous developers were threatening to build on the site of ancient standing stones. There was always a body, sometimes more than one; and when the police became involved, they were as human, fallible and real as Merrily and her cohorts. There was usually – though not always – a rational explanation for spooky goings-on, and equally often the reader was simply left to make up his or her own mind. The novels were a masterclass in atmosphere, and to a regular reader the characters became old friends, or foes to be battled with alongside Merrily herself.
The strange, weird and spooky is often a feature of crime novels and other crime writers choose clergy people as protagonists, though perhaps not chain-smoking, swearing ones. All the same, Phil Rickman’s books were unique. It’s saddening to think that after the one he delivered to his agent only days before he died, there will be no more. Rest in peace, Phil, wherever you are. You’ll be sorely missed.
Books by Phil Rickman
The Merrily Watkins series
Grayle Underhill series
(first two published under the name of Will Kingdom)
The Cold Calling, Mean Spirit
Night After Night
John Dee series
The Bones of Avalon, The Heresy of Dr Dee
Marco series
(for older children, published under the name of Thom Madley)
Marco's Pendulum
Marco and the Blade of Night
Standalones
Candlenight
Curfew / Crybbe
December
The Man in the Moss
The Chalice
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