Yorkshire may be God’s Own County but Lancashire, at least for Andrew Michael Hurley, is firmly in the possession of the Devil. Hurley’s first novel, The Loney (2014), follows a dysfunctional Catholic family on a pilgrimage to a holy well situated on a ‘wild and useless length of English coastline’ near Morecambe Bay, where they find that the eldritch landscape plays host to occult rituals and supernatural manifestations. 

Hurley, who taught and worked as a librarian part-time in order to write The Loney, was rewarded for his gamble with the Costa First Novel Award (2015) and the Book of the Year trophy at the British Book Industry Awards. Now comes his second novel, Devil’s Day, in which he