Showing The Death Pit by Tony Strong

As he did so well in his first thriller, The Poison Tree, 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 rarefied literary circles of Oxford (where the first story took place), both are small town environments that engender gossip and illicit goings-on.

A flourishing modern coven of witches seems a natural part of the Scottish landscape--especially since nearby Babcock Castle was the scene of a notorious 17th-century trial and the burning of Catherine McCulloch, a woman accused of witchcraft. But when the body of one of the women in the coven 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 PhD 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 where sex and danger charge the air. --Dick Adler