CRT Awards - Fiction Book of the Year 2013

"A wonderfully atmospheric story of sudden death in a secluded Welsh valley."

Pennant Melangell lies at the head of a mountain valley in North Wales. It consists of a church, with the medieval shrine and pilgrimage site of St Melangell, a few cottages - and a newly constructed hotel, the House of the Hare, built by its imposing director Thaddeus Brown.

To the House of the Hare come Aidan and Jenny Davison, with their seven-year-old daughter Melangell. Jenny has advanced cancer: will the sacred location become a place of healing? Or will the hotel's new facilities - for instance, its impressive archery range - become a place of death? In this secluded setting, who might be the victim?

The first of a series of new mysteries featuring Aidan and Melangell and set in what Fay Sampson describes as the 'thin' places of the Celtic world.