As he did so well in his first thriller, The Poison Tree, British writer Tony Strong again takes us into a closed-off world and exposes its most private secrets in his second novel, The Death Pit. Even though the Scottish town of Inverness seems a long way from the rarified literary circles of Oxford (where the first story takes place), both are small-town environments that engender gossip and illicit goings-on. A flourishing modern coven of witches seems a natural feature of the Scottish landscape--especially since nearby Babcock Castle once was the scene of a notorious 17th-century trial and the burning at the stake of Catherine McCulloch, a woman accused of witchcraft. But when the body of one of the coven members is found dismembered in a foul pit where diseased pigs are discarded, some of the residents blame the witches and take violent action against them. Terry Williams, a Ph.D. candidate, has come to Babcock Castle to study McCullogh"s papers and finds herself caught up in the mystery when she discovers a link between the past and the present. Strong is a sly writer who knows how to create sympathetic, believable characters and place them in a tightly-controlled atmosphere in which the air is charged with sex and danger. --Dick Adler