The Castle of the Demon

by Reginald Hill

A woman on the run from her husband encounters danger in a seaside town.

Emily Salter is once again using her maiden name, living with her dog in a town along northern England’s coast that she remembers fondly from childhood holidays. Her intention was to get far away from her controlling and threatening husband. Here, she’s found some refuge, even met a nice gentleman, though she’s not anxious to jump into another relationship.

But her new home is not as peaceful as it appears on the surface. Spies lurk in its remote corners—and a dead body lurks under the water. To Emily’s shock, she is beginning to suspect that the intrigue has something to do with her—as well as the man she thought she left behind—in this suspenseful mystery by a Diamond Dagger–winning author.

Also published under the title The Turning of the Tide.
 

180 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 17, 2019

About the author

Reginald Charles Hill was a contemporary English crime writer, and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.

After National Service (1955-57) and studying English at St Catherine's College, Oxford University (1957-60) he worked as a teacher for many years, rising to Senior Lecturer at Doncaster College of Education. In 1980 he retired from salaried work in order to devote himself full-time to writing.

Hill is best known for his more than 20 novels featuring the Yorkshire detectives Andrew Dalziel, Peter Pascoe and Edgar Wield. He has also written more than 30 other novels, including five featuring Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned private detective in a fictional Luton. Novels originally published under the pseudonyms of Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill have now appeared under his own name. Hill is also a writer of short stories, and ghost tales.

Reviews

[Nigel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first non Dalziel and Pascoe story from Reginald Hill it was an engaging story even if some of the parts didn't quite seem to fit. Emily Salter has left her husband who appears to be a controlling bully, but later on we find out the place she ran away to was suggested to her by hubby. Whilst there she see a mysterious face at a window, believes the cottage to have been broken into and is violently mugged yet she freely hands the keys of her cottage to someone she barely knows just so he can go and find his lighter that 'Oh looks he's left behind' - I just can't see someone in her position doing that. A complicated overarching plot involving a training college for spies, a training mission that actually secret documents from a local American base keeps the book moving but it is somewhat confusing and certainly difficult to separate the good guys from the bad.
Overall though not a quite enjoyable book

[Berri Beatty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite liked this fun, multi-genre (in the twist) romantic suspense novel, the first Hill wrote under a psuedonym, but which is now published as his crime fiction is. The characters are memorable and interesting, the setting equally so. But there is something off and rather amusing that the author could not seem to vacate his own gender in trying to be "in the mindset" of the female protagonist.

[Loni Ivanovskis · Rating 2 out of 5]

not his genre

[Stephanie Sprague]

Really enjoyed the vintage vibe. Vintage in the best way, a finish similar to Helen McInnes from the 70s. Genuinely frightening in the end with a surprise explanation.