<b>An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers.</b><br> <b><br></b>The year is 1736 and five travellers are journeying across Exmoor on horseback, their purpose unknown. One evening they stop at a village inn for some rest and, soon after, hear that a man has been hanged nearby and that another is missing. What follows is a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, rituals and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as the mystery swerves towards a startling vision at its centre.<br> <br> 'This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion' <b>Anthony Burgess, <i>Observer</i></b><br> <br> 'The reader is carried headlong into a maze of violent death, bizarre sex, disguise and terror' <i>Sunday Times</i>