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Here I can promise you: it won't be. You may only read this cover to cover once over, but having done so, if you are remotely interested in the early-Euro-American history (if I can put it like that), if you are fascinated by stories of witchcraft around the world, if you are interested in the Salem story specifically, if indeed you want to analyse Miller's drama more fully, if the role of religion in both the colonisation story of America and the subsequent break with the colonial masters is your curiosity-bug… any of these and no doubt more beside, will find something to ponder on in these pages.

One suspects, however, that none of those threw down the research challenges of a trial in a small New England village in the sixteen-nineties. She makes the point herself that while a surprising number of the protagonists could probably read, few them could (or a least did) write. Of those that did keep meticulous journals there are significant gaps for the months in the question… telling in itself.