Horror mystery set on the North York Moors

20th December 2021

Demon by Matt Wesolowski, horror mystery set on the North York Moors.

Another outing for the fictional #SixStories podcast, hosted by Ross King. This time he focusses on the murder of 12 year old Sidney and the two perpetrators, who were classmates and of a similar age. The murder took place in 1995, in the close knit community of Ussalthwaite, near Pickering. The demonic duo, who shocked the world, are now out of prison with new identities, and there is debate whether they are sufficiently rehabilitated.

True crime podcasts are really popular in the real word (I for one enjoy the occasional podcast and am still searching for anything to really top Death in Ice Valley), so it is not surprising that authors are finding ways of transposing the structure into novel form. Demon is no. 6 in the Six Stories series and the author anticipated interest in this kind of storytelling back in 2016, when the first in the Six Stories series was published. (Others are following in the author’s footsteps, including True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox, set in Manchester). As always, the story is well constructed, as the interviewer looks into the past as he encourages experts, locals, and anyone who had some association with the events back then to talk him through their take on the traumatic events.

As well as interviews, the author uses all kinds of devices to slide in information, in order to build up a very gothic picture of demonic possession: whether conversations led by the host, letters from a child to the child’s mother, the occasional outraged listener who needs to vent his spleen, and growing media scrutiny. It works very well and the author writes ‘dark’ very well.

Now, in the very same place where Sydney’s body was found, a man’s body is found, but the identity is not revealed in the early stages of the investigation. Whatever the cause, however, the significance of the setting is paramount. Gradually the ‘listener’ discovers that Ussalthwaite – on the face of it a beautiful, rural village – has its own very unusual, dark and cursed history, and the players in the latter few years are living their lives on a stage that was set several centuries ago.

The setting is suitably dark and unforgiving and centres around spooky disused kilns up on the moors. The author does stress at the beginning that his book contains fictional violence against children and animals that may cause some readers distress and upset.

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