THE HOLLOWS: A STORM IN COMING... BY DANIEL CHURCH

I would recommend  The Hollows to anyone looking for an action novel that packs a lot of firepower while acknowledging that going unarmed is often what requires the most courage.

A decade ago Ben Wheatley’s film Kill List proved that there are rich pickings to be had in the borderland between folk horror and gritty realism, and today’s horror novelists are keener than ever to till that cursed soil. The first few chapters of The Hollows could come straight from one of those Northern crime offerings by the likes of Peter Robinson, with the discovery of a corpse in an unusual predicament and a herd of cops and medics tramping around in the rural Derbyshire cold. As the body count increases it becomes apparent that Constable Cheetham is dealing with supernatural forces, but in the first half of the book the hardest-hitting terrors are much closer to home. Cheetham is a pleasant enough heroine, and I enjoyed her interactions with her time-serving “superior” Ted Graham, but what really gets The Hollows started is the introduction of the corpse’s family, the denizens of the local Bad Farm.

Helmed by diamond-hard matriarch Liz, the Harpers are the kind of farmers who are more into dogfights and bathtub meth than organic honey and heritage breeds. Between them they embody all the deadly sins and then some, a rural equivalent of the council estate gang family that haunts the British popular imagination. With the exception of Jess and the deceased Tony, they could easily be empty stereotypes, but Church is able to bring them all to life and make them compelling, especially Liz and Keira. Just as importantly, their arrival is a chance to see some of the darkness in Ellie, who understandably entertains fantasies of swift and blinding violence throughout her “death knock” visit to the family. For me the best bits in the book are the tussles between the law and the Harpers, which at times have a white-knuckled intensity worthy of rural action films like Straightheads or Straw Dogs.

But gradually the folk horror element creeps in. The Harpers are in league with something very old and very malignant, and as the nights draw in the village comes under attack from the kind of creatures that need the input of a spooky vicar to deal with (in this case Madeleine, who has shades of Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins, but blunter and wielding a pack of dogs instead of a surly teenage daughter.) Soon Church is handling a cast of thousands (well, dozens) as everyone does their best to survive, and there are some very tense moments and nasty little details as good and evil lock horns on a scale that is both cosmic and very local.

Aimed at a broad market, The Hollows is very representative of the folk horror/action crossover subgenre that is now popular with mainstream and indie presses alike (think Adam Nevill’s The Reddening or any number of lesser works about pissed-off stags.) But it also stands out for a couple of reasons. One of its big themes is the nature of community, and how people come together in times of crisis. However, with the story arc of the Harper family – village outsiders who’ve been ostracized for generations while simultaneously being entrusted with an insanely important job - Church also sheds light on a fact people often prefer to ignore about communities, which is that you can’t create one without excluding somebody. Every community needs an outsider, a social leper who is doomed to sit outside the campfire’s cosy glow, and Church’s awareness of this constantly prevents The Hollows from sinking into sentiment. This is mostly done through the character of Jess, the Good Harper, who yearns to belong while at the same time being riddled with anger and mistrust of the villagers who have long shunned her family.

Another strong point of the novel is its commitment to depicting the real mental health impact of participating in violence, either as victim or perpetrator. The fact that Cheetham is allowed to have a great big panic attack without losing her authority is a definite improvement on traditional portrayals of tough cops, and if you want a book that showcases women’s strength in a wide variety of different ways, you’ll get what you came for here. As a card-carrying coward with no female strength at all, the only character I came close to identifying with was Graham, but the scenes of otherworldly carnage and human brutality are leavened with some amusing snappy dialogue that could only come from the north of England: “cocks” here, “wacks” there, and even a Bedlington terrier thrown in. I would recommend  The Hollows to anyone looking for an action novel that packs a lot of firepower while acknowledging that going unarmed is often what requires the most courage.

THE HOLLOWS: A STORM IN COMING... 
BY DANIEL CHURCH ​

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

File Under: Folk Horror [ Small Town | Big Terror | Long Night | A Few Good Women ]

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