Devil's Day

BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, METRO AND MAIL ON SUNDAY'The new master of menace' Sunday TimesAfter the blizzard of a century ago, it was weeks before anyone got in or out. By that time, what had happened there, what the Devil had done, was already fable.Devil's Day is a day for children now, of course. A tradition it's easy to mock, from the outside. But it's important to remember why we do what we do. It's important to know what our grandfathers have passed down to us.Because it's hard to understand, if you're not from the valley, how this place is in your blood.That's why I came back, with Kat; it wasn't just because the Gaffer was dead.Though that year we may have let the Devil in after all . . .

Hurley is a superb storyteller. He leads you up on to the moors, into the eye of a snowstorm, dropping little clues, sinister hints at devilment and demonic possession. Then he changes course, scuffs over the prints in the snow, springs new villainies on you, abandons you overnight in the hills, The nebulous presence of the Devil is evoked so palpably in this novel that at times I hardly dared look up when reading for fear of seeing him grinning at me from the chair next to mine, The new master of menace. This chilling follow-up to The Loney confirms its author as a writer to watch , Chilling and captivating; read at your peril, Beautifully captures a bleak landscape and the feeling of something evil and unknowable in the moors, the hills and the byways

Andrew Michael Hurley has lived in Manchester and London, and is now based in Lancashire. His first novel, The Loney, was originally published by Tartarus Press as a 300-copy limited edition, before being republished by John Murray. It went on to sell in twenty languages, win the Costa Best First Novel Award and Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards in 2016, and is in development as a feature film. Devil's Day is his second novel.