This is not a book for the faint of heart, or one to read near midnight on Halloween. It begins with an old whistle, corroded,
with strange alphabets and languages inscribed on it. Whenever it blows, the wind rises out of nowhere (in accord with the old saying that one can whistle up a wind), at the start, driving Peter Wardwell on his little motor
sailing boat into a strange anduncanny cove--hidden by the
ancient, twisted trees coming down to the shore, with scarcely a patch of sand for a beach--yet having withal a mysteriously summoning atmosphere.
He waits out the storm and decides he should bring his girlfriend (with sandwiches for lunch) down there to swim someday -- he does, and therein really begins this tale of twisted Gothic horror, demonic possession, and ancient wrongs,with fates completed and determined in the present only by battles between good and evil magics and entities possessing those in the present to fight battles as ancient as magic's gifts to mankind.
Throughout this book, the reader is held in suspense, as each section brings new revelations concerning the wizard Simon Wardwell (a distant ancestor of the main male character, and love interest, in the book, Peter Wardwell) -- his powers, activities, history, fate and possible return and possession of his descendant, Peter
and his plans for revenge in the sleepy little New England coastal town of Northport.
Peter's girlfriend, Mary Ann, is very nearly killed by the strange winds and storms (the Devil Wind of the title) summoned by the ancient whistle, called the Devil's Hornpipe, which Peter has found and played, accidentally calling forth his evil ancestor and the dark powers he serves and controls, and who plans to use Peter as his new fleshly incarnation and instrument of vengeance on teh descendants of those who put him and his disciples to death.
Mary Ann, however, learns the truth (or as much of it as she can bear to know) from Miss Durham and her friend Sam Hopkins, the lobster fisherman who saved Mary Ann from the Devil Wind before. Together, she and Sam must hunt down and destroy the threat to Northport before death, destruction and disappearance become the norm there, and not the exception. How they do this and what is done is one of the best Gothic horror, release of ancient evil novels around. It's a real pageturner and more than well worth the reading.