The Noose & Gibbet by Craig Saunders

I haven’t read any horror for a while. This book is more of a sharp shock than a long scare your pants off for weeks type of book. Just what I needed. It weighs in at just under two hundred pages. I found the length just about right. The story had great pace without becoming rushed and the story finished in a natural conclusion.

The Noose & Gibbet is a pub. The traditional way to name an English pub is to look at what is there before it is a pub built or converted and use that to name the pub. That way people will know where it is by associating the place with the pub. The origins of the pub are never mentioned in the book but it is safe to assume that there was probably a gibbet there before the pub was built. Places like that have a strange feel to them and it is no surprise that one of the guests staying at the Noose was a writer trying to harness the feel to inspire her writing. This again isn’t said in as many words and this is something I found throughout this book. It was written in such a way that my mind was supplying a lot of the back story from subtle little suggestions. This made it feel like the story belonged to me as a reader and I liked that.

This story remind me of the headless horsemen stories except with a figure more resembling a personification of death. The Noose & Gibbet may be the nexus for everything that happens but the whole village of Frampton is embroiled in the goings on that makes it feel like The League Of Gentlemen without the laughs. Oddly though my favourite thing in the whole story is that the street cleaner has a never ending dog-end. For some reason that really tickled me and reminded me of a cleaner I used to see when I was young.

This is a well crafted and enjoyable book that is easy to read. It also costs about the same as a slice of cake. Do your diet a favour and read this instead of buying a cake with your latte.

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