The Bog

American archeologist David Macauley is thrilled when a 2000-year-old body is found, perfectly preserved by peaty water, in an English West Country bog; when another body turns up, David moves his family there. The villagers of Fenchurch St. Jude are a dour, clannish lot and the local lord, Marquis Grenville de L'Isle, isn't much friendlier. David's wife is vaguely worried by the local atmosphere, especially after hearing of a mysterius bog ""creature,'' then David finds odd bite marks on the bog bodies and begins to wonder about their source. Mysterious occurences multiply, and soon David is in deadly conflict with a 4500-year-old necromancer and his demon. The book is a roller-coaster, alternately boring and exciting; the prose is often awkward and wooden, the people never more than cardboard figures, and the ostensibly brilliant David is occasionally pretty dim. While some of the magic lore is interesting, disbelief is never suspended effectively for long. Talbot wrote The Delicate Dependency. (March 26)