December has the shortest days, the darkest nights...

On the night of 8 December 1980, John Lennon was murdered in New York. Meanwhile, in a recording studio built into the ruins of the medieval abbey of Ystrad Ddu, four musicians brought together because of their psychic sensitivities were attempting to finish an album. As it turned out, they were all so emotionally damaged by the events of that unholy night that they burned the tapes instead. Or thought they had...

Now Dave and Simon and Tom and Moira have been lured, cajoled - virtually blackmailed - into returning to complete their almost forgotten masterpiece. Along with Tom's despairing wife Shelley, his Down's Syndrome daughter Vanessa, Weasel the roadie, Prof Levin the alcoholic recording engineer...All back to the abbey.

In December, naturally.

I remember the day, about four years ago, when I first picked up a Phil Rickman book. There was a shelf in my favourite section of the bookshop that sported his work, and that day I was looking for something spooky. After reading the backs of all his books I finally picked my choice...it wasn't December. It was The Chalice. I've overlooked this book on each subsequent shopping trip based totally on the back of the book. It didn't sound like a particularly good story; so why read it now? Well, it was the note at the end of Rickman's The Cure of Souls. One of the characters in Cure is Simon, and he is one of the group whose story is told here. I now want desperately to read this, as he intrigued me all through Cure, and I want to know how he got the way he is now. Yay, now I have it!