In a Victorian mansion turned hotel on the Welsh border, Ben Foley, a redundant TV drama producer, hosts unprofitable murder-mystery weekends and feeds his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles.Local tradition argues that the origins of The Hound lie not on Dartmoor but in the Herefordshire legend of a black dog foreshadowing death in the Vaughan family. Young Jane Watkins, whose first weekend job is at the Stanner Hall Hotel, is intrigued. But Jane's mother, Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy when she learns how Ben Foley proposes to try to prove his theory.As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley's dabbling uncovers more than he can handle. For the history of Stanner Hall is linked not only to the Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the legacy of a medieval exorcism but with a chain of murders that is far from fictional.Merrily Watkins, already dragged into the treacherous mire of spiritual healing, must now consider the possibility of inherited evil and the nature and validity of a lingering family curse. Read Less