The Cure of Souls

As high summer bakes the rich, heavy earth of the Frome Valley in north-east Herefordshire, dark shadows gather - quite literally - around a converted hopkiln where the last owner was savagely murdered.
Though the local vicar dismisses claims by the current occupants that the place is haunted, their story is soon splashed over a Sunday newspaper - and the diocesan Deliverance Minister, the Revd. Merrily Watkins, is directed by the Bishop of Hereford to defuse the situation. Merrily, however, is already contending with a similar problem involving a woman's claim that her adopted teenage daughter is possessed by evil.
In both cases Merrily remains unconvinced but, in this summer of oppressive heat and sudden storms, nothing is ever going to be quite what it seems. As she is drawn into a tangle of trickery, deceit, corruption and sexual menace, her hastily conducted exorcism produces unhappy results. With Merrily's increasing paranoia putting both her faith and her future on the line, and the whole concept of Deliverance now facing public trial, she and her good friend Lol Robinson can only try to uncover the secrets of Knight's Frome - a village concealing a past as twisted as the vines on the hop-plants once surrounding it.
The two of them discover how local history once became entwined with the legacy and superstitions of the Romany gypsies who once harvested these crops. It seems the Rom have long memories - allegedly on both sides of the grave - and for them the darkest hour could be noon, the time of no shadows.