The acclaimed author of The Devil of Nanking returns with a riveting, disturbing thriller of religious fanatics, hoax debunkers, and the dark side of belief. Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes, but when he visits a secretive religious community on a remote Scottish island, everything he thought he knew is overturned. On the trial of a strange creature caught briefly on film, so deformed it can hardly be human, Oakes crosses a border of electrical fencing, toxin-filled oil drums, and pigs’ skulls to infiltrate the territory of the groups’ isolated founder, Malachi Dove. Their confrontation, and its violent aftermath, is so catastrophic that it forces Oakes to question the nature of evil—and whether he might be responsible for the heinous crime about to unfold.
