Feral

In the Peak District of Derbyshire, a diverse cast of characters come together. David Button, an antiquarian and folklorist, troubled by the fading fertility of his family. Detective Inspector Sharda Widecombe and Detective Sergeant Dennis Fair, investigating a series of gruesome murders. Professor David Abrahamovic and his wife, Brenda, breeders of dogs with unimaginable intelligence. Professor Abrahamovic will uncover an ancient treasure and the dogs will stand trial as non-human persons. Unlikely, but entirely convincing events in the context of the tale. Disturbing correlations and coincidences hint of a distant pagan presence in the landscape, and of a tendency for nature to reassert itself. Many of the tangled threads become untwisted at the end of the novel in the climax which takes place in the stone circle at the top of the hill of Arbor Low on the morning of the summer solstice. Over thirteen thousand years Britain has gone from a frozen ice sheet to a completely forested landmass to the most deforested and industrially polluted landscape in Europe. Despite that, Britain boasts more bird-watchers per square mile than any other country in the world. This novel touches on the attempts of some of those naturalists to restore Derbyshire to a state of pristine wilderness by an unorthodox method. This story is like one of those gob-stoppers that changes colour the more you suck away at it. One thing is certain, you will not have read anything like Feral before. As with his first novel, Ronk, the author manages to shock you not only by the utter novelty of his ideas, but also by the convincing believability of them.