Starve Acre

★★★★★

British gothic/horror writer Andrew Michael Hurley’s third novel is a perfectly pitched tale of suspense and the dark side of folklore. This time, grief-stricken parents Richard and Juliette Willoughby are struggling to cope with the death of their son, Ewan, and are retreating into different obsessions. Juliette wants help from an occultist called Mrs Forde; Richard prefers to throw himself into excavating a field on his family’s Yorkshire farmland to find the roots of an ancient gallows tree. But both are vulnerable to the village superstition of a malevolent figure called Jack Grey. Hurley spins an atmosphere of terror and anticipation over the isolated rural setting.