In his prologue, John Fowles tells us that “A Maggot” began as a vision he had of five travellers riding with mysterious purpose through remote countryside. This image gives way to another – a hanging corpse with violets stuffed in its mouth – which leads us into a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, disappearances and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as this compelling mystery swerves towards a starling vision at its centre.