As autumn draws in, a series of unexplained vicious attacks occur in a small northern town renowned for being a bohemian backwater.

As the national media descends, local journalist Roddy Mace attempts to tell the story, but finds the very nature of truth brought into question. He turns to disgraced detective James Brindle for help.

When further attacks occur the shattered community becomes the focus of an accelerating media that favours immediacy over truth. Murder and myth collide in a folk-crime story about place, identity and the tangled lives of those who never leave.

As good as anything being written in Britain today -- HORATIO CLARE
Layers of landscape, myth and the hidden underbelly of everyday life outside of the metropolis are built up as the plot unfolds and the darkness grows. By now you should all know how good a writer Myers is. If you don’t, These Darkening Days will be more than enough to convince you * LOUD & QUIET *
A powerful novel by a writer who has found his subject and the voice that best expresses it … He could be Yorkshire’s Iain Sinclair as well as its Cormac McCarthy * BOOKMUNCH *
Subtle and compelling, controlled and atmospheric – perfect, in fact, for the long dark nights ahead * MORNING STAR *
He’s James Ellroy with a flat cap and a terrier -- JOHN MITCHINSON
The collective blood pressure of the Yorkshire tourist board must ratchet up several notches every time that Myers publishes a new novel, but for the rest of us this is gripping stuff * THE CRACK *
Everything here, from the now-familiar landscapes to the description of life at the local newspaper and the behaviour of parachuted-in Sun reporters, is note perfect…But the book goes much further, delving into society’s hysterical narcissism and the way its tendrils snake all the way back into myth, legend and half-forgotten community history. There’s no question that this is a superb piece of work….a fantastic eye for landscape and great political and cultural insight…it’s funny, brutal and properly thrilling * THRILL FILTER *
The writing is stunning, from the occasional sentence which catches you and brings you up short – The streetlights wear soft halos in the mist – through to the ability to evoke the grittiness of this northern town in a few words. Sometimes I found myself going back and rereading sections, just for the pleasure the words gave. In places it’s almost poetic. And it’s all brilliant * BOOK BAG *

Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. His most recent novel, The Offing, was an international bestseller and selected for the Radio 2 Book Club. Other works include The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, Beastings which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature, and Pig Iron which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published non-fiction, poetry and crime novels and his journalism has appeared in publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator, Caught By The River and many more. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.

benmyers.com / @BenMyers1