The setting is a hovel in England's Cambridgeshire fens, a flimsy wood structure that offers only the barest protection from the elements, both natural and human. The protagonists are a pair of gardeners who have lost their jobs at Cambridge University's Christ Church College — Wattmore because of accusations concerning a ten-year-old boy, Griffin because of his loyalty to Wattmore. Griffin is frustrated and confused by his friend, who belongs to a Christian cult led by Dougal, a man Griffin identifies as a moron and who has directed his followers to place iconostases in their homes — panels depicting Christian imagery based on Byzantine tradition. One of these adorns the cabin's back wall. The two men are close, protective of each other against an undefined menace, an evil that presses against their windows and eventually enters in the person of Bolla Fogg, an ex-con or perhaps an escapee, a lumpy, mean-tempered potato of a woman with a very shaky hold... More >>>