Jez Lowe's third novel, "Piper's Lonnen", published by Badapple Books in July 2022.
The bleak hills of Northumberland boast many myths and legends. Tales of blood-soaked battles and ghost-ridden tragedies told in Border Ballads and local folklore have long been common currency among North Country folk. Even stranger sagas, telling of shape-changing Braags, blood-thirsty Redcaps and slithering Yottuns have haunted these wild lands for generations.
But in an enlightened Victorian age, can such stories really explain the abduction of a skilled musician, or the appearance of outlandish figures emerging from the hills to terrorise the people of remote towns and villages? Or is there something more earth-bound and yet equally sinister at the roots of the mystery?
Reluctant to risk their own reputation on such a curious investigation, the Tyneside Constabulary once more call upon the services of the stranger from the south, Inspector Evan Piper, to delve deep into this rural conundrum. "Use a Piper to find a piper" is their wry maxim, as they dispatch the wary young man into the wild unknowns of the Borderlands, towards the forbidding track known as Piper's Lonnen, with only a hard-drinking Hexhamshire labouring lad and a parson's wife as his companions.
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