P.C. Dougherty, The Hangman's Hymn

The Hangman's Hymn

P.C. Dougherty

St. Martin's, Dec 2004, $22.95, 224 pp.

ISBN: 0312300905

The pilgrims continue their journey to Canterbury, but are stopped by Luke Tiverton and his men providing the king's justice by hanging violators of the "King's Peace". One of the pilgrims, the carpenter, faints at the grim sight. Continuing on their pilgrimage, the travelers stop for the night at St. Bardolph's Priory.

While resting at the priory, the carpenter narrates his tale. Simon Cotterill, a carpenter, follows his beloved to Gloucester where needing work he joins a hangman's crew. In the nearby forest, women are vanishing without a trace and a disfigured corpse has been found in the vicinity. Mayor Humphrey assumes that witches are toiling and boiling in the area and quickly has three crones arrested. Trying to keep the panic down and to insure the town continues to flourish, the mayor and his cronies arrange a kangaroo midnight trial to insure a guilty charge. Three days later they are hung in the forest, but the hangmen flee a nasty storm. When they return the witches are gone and their coven apparently seeks vengeance one mortal at a time. Simon hides while also serendipitously tries to solve who the real killer is.

The latest Chaucer tale, THE HANGMAN'S HYMN, is a terrific entry in what is one of the best continuing sagas on the market today. The tale is fun due to the exhilarating story within an exciting outer tale as the carpenter narrates a chilling ghostly amateur sleuth when the travelers stop for respite. The two sets of characters are fully developed so that the audience feels they rest at St. Bardolph's with the pilgrims and that the Carpenter's Tale happened.

Harriet Klausner