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Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell is celebrating the Millennium. Not the one everybody else celebrated - that was last year. His is the mathematically and historically correct version: 31st December 2000.
Just about to savour his umpteenth Southern Comfort, he is interrupted by the doorbell. It's no New Year reveller, however, but the body of an old woman who, on a night of unseasonal mildness, has frozen to death.
The dead woman was Elizabeth Pride, who lived alone near Chanctonbury Ring, in the folds of the Sussex Weald. Rattled by the discovery of a corpse on his own doorstep, Maxwell decides to investigate, and his enquiries eventually lead him to the notorious Barlichway Estate, the centre of crime in otherwise sleepy Leighford.
When others start falling ill on the Estate, hysteria grips the area. The local health authorities are at a loss to explain the symptoms - or why all the victims are elderly and live alone.
At the dawn of the 21st century, Maxwell seems to have stumbled onto something every rational soul would think had been buried with the past: witchcraft.
Maxwell's Curse is the sixth outing for Peter Maxwell, the indefatigable Head of Sixth whose highly unlikely methods of detection make for an intriguing - and often hilarious - read.
book reviews
Sunday Mercury
‘Max – the creation of M.J.Trow – is a splendidly original spin on that old English favourite, the amateur detective.’
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