The Sacred Well Murders by Susan Rowland
Mary Wandwalker, a novice detective, is hired to chaperone a young American, Rhiannon, to the Oxford University Summer School on the ancient Celts. A simple job turns deadly when Mary and her operatives, Caroline and Anna, attend sacrifices at various sacred wells. Mary may lose everything in discovering that those who need the gods, become possessed by them.
Trouble begins when Mary learns that the so-called Reborn Celts, who run the Summer School, have been infiltrated by white supremacists. Is their rhetoric of blood sacrifice not so much a symbol of psychic wholeness but rather a sign for literal bloodshed? Who better to penetrate occult rites than a harmless woman of a certain age?
Mary agrees to spy on the Reborn Celts, then learns, to her horror, of Anna’s wild affair with the chief suspect, Joe Griffith. With Griffith also the object of Rhiannon’s obsession, Mary realizes too late that that these 21st century Celts mean murder. The Reborn Celts plan three rites to summon the old gods: in an Oxford sacred well, near the Thames, and in Celtic London, where a new sacred well will restore one of the Thames’ “lost rivers.”
Days before the summer solstice, Caroline and Anna race to London searching for Mary, who has been kidnapped Will she end as the crone sacrifice, or will the three women re-make their detecting family out of the murderous emergency?
