The Hollows by Daniel Church

I would like to thank Caroline from Angry Robot for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Angry Robot

Published – 8/11

Price – £14.99 paperback £5.69 Kindle eBook

Folk horror meets ancient gods in a remote snowbound Peak District town where several murders take place…

In a lonely village in the Peak District, during the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime snow storm, Constable Ellie Cheetham finds a body. The man, a local ne'er-do-well, appears to have died in a tragic accident: he drank too much and froze to death.

But the facts don't add up: the dead man is clutching a knife in one hand, and there's evidence he was hiding from someone. Someone who watched him die. Stranger still, an odd mark has been drawn onto a stone beside his body.

The next victims are two families on the outskirts of town. As the storm rises and the body count grows, Ellie realises she has a terrifying problem on her hands: someone – or some thing – is killing indiscriminately, attacking in the darkness and using the storm for cover.

The killer is circling ever closer to the village. The storm's getting worse... and the power's just gone out.

The countryside we love in the UK to think as quiet and sedate, but you do when you visit realise how cut-off from the world you can be. Sherlock Holmes was written to have said ‘that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside’. But the countryside is not thanks to its nature safe; farming has accidents; the weather can quickly turn as many a hiker has found to their costs and of course there are all the old myths and traditions lurking in plain or not so plain sight. In Juliet E McKenna’s excellent Green Man series, we are regularly shown a countryside modern; tough and filled with the real monsters everyone else in our comfy cities forgot. Now Daniel Church adds to that with the excellent The Hollows which provides one of the stand-out horror novels of the year for me with a small Peak District Village facing annihilation by monsters on the longest nights of the year.

Barsall Village has less than a thousand residents. Most of the time the biggest excitement is a row about planning permission or the endless deed of the notorious Harper family in live separated farm stead. It’s a decent quiet community and for Ellie who has left the busy life of Manchester it’s a life she needs after the unexpected death of her son and break-up of her marriage. She just takes it a day at a time. But on the 19th of December they find the frozen body of Tony Harper – probably the only one most people liked. A strange symbol is found next to his body; beyond signs he was being chased there are no signs he was killed but that someone watched him die. Ellie and her colleague start investigations but are unaware this event has triggered events underneath the Village. The Tatterskins are awakened; and they need to hunt. Over the coming nights death will sweep this village and Ellie will find herself and the remining survivors just trying to survive hour by hour.

This is one of the best paced stories I’ve read this year and always changing. It starts pretty much a police procedural (the kind you would expect on a Sunday evening). Church builds up characters sharply and swiftly focusing Ellie our key character who is pragmatic, decent but very much seeking a quiet life. Her best friend Milly the local sweary village Doctor with whom a sense of humour is shared and Tom Elie’s boss who seeks a quiet life before retirement; we get landlords caring for their sick wife, vicars trying to keep the community happy or studying local history. Very swiftly though Church plunges his village into a horrific nightmare. The village is taken by surprise as you’d expect. No-one actually expects monsters to be real. But in this story, we get Tatterskins and oh these poor souls have very little chance.

The Tatterksins are where Church very nimbly transits this tale into cosmic and survival horror. I won’t tell you much about them as I want you exposed to them unawares. They are many, they are smart, they are deadly and only come out at night. Their first appearance properly in spinechilling terrifying stuff and they have no mercy. I absolutely am impressed how Church just switches the story into pure horror and from that moment on you and the surviving members of the village will view sunset when it is mentioned with trepidation. They’re inhuman and also have a goal in mind.

Church provides a gritty feel for the rest of the book. When Tatterskins attack at first its luck more than anything that keeps some alive and then we have people walking through ruins of convenience stores, surgeries and churches trying to survive. Ellie Millie and also the local historian/vicar Madeline all have to work together to try and explain what happens. The latter half of the book is characters coming together, putting everything on the line and just trying to do good. I loved the sense of fatalistic camaraderie that develops with the villagers and of course we remember that guns are often part of village life. We get makeshift armies, last stands, and heart-stopping attempts to escape all thrown in and you care for everyone under Ellie’s protection and Church makes survival very random as is life when monsters lurk everywhere. The latter scenes plunge firmly into Cosmic Horror territory as we explore underneath this village; and we finally get to understand all the stakes that are at play. All delivered superbly!

Alongside the Tatterskins Church provides the generally loathsome Harper family. Your standard rural crime family who do whatever they like provided they can get away with it. But unusually they actually do know a bit more about what is going on and may hold the key to survival. Church provides a sly, evil, and magnetic matriarch named Liz who rules her family as a benign dictator and wants scores settled with Ellie. They’re a fantastic rogue element in the storyline and herald a gritty shotgun filled set of scenes later on in the book that really make the reader hold their breath.

Gentle Reader, I loved this book! Its use of transitions, genre-slicing and pacing make this a read I could not put down and it delivered all the peaks of the finest horror action film. You can imagine a John Carpenter soundtrack in the background as we look at snow covered with blood, burning fires and hear constant gunshots all alone in an isolated English village. Curl up in a comfy chair, devour this book and get worried about that noise at the window. I shall be watching out for more from Church in the meantime. Strongly recommended!