Walking by Night

May 25, 2015
While walking home from a night out with friends in the Yorkshire city of Eborby, Debby Telerhaye stumbles across what appears to be the body of a woman, possibly a nun, in Ellis’s spooky fifth Joe Plantagenet mystery (after 2012’s Watching the Ghosts). A short time later, a police search of the area turns up nothing. Debby’s fears are written off as a drink-induced fantasy, until an actress’s strangled body is found the next morning in a ruined church. The subsequent murder of an actor, found hanging from a clothes rail in a dressing room of the city’s Playhouse Theatre, raises the ante. Are the deaths related to the theater’s staging a grizzly adaptation of Ken Russell’s film version of The Devils? Det. Insp. Joe Plantagent, who leads the investigation, tries to find out. For all the ghostly goings-on, the occult element remains subordinate to the sleuthing, in an entry notable for its sympathetic characters and brisk plot.