BOOK REVIEW: ​THE DEVILS INN BY DAVID WATKINS

“I don’t want to die in a pub in Devon…”
There is a pub in the heart of Dartmoor where a fire has burned every day for over 150 years.
It is said the fire never goes out.
It is said that if it does, the Devil will appear and claim the souls of all inside.
Tonight, seven strangers are stranded there during a fierce snowstorm.
Tonight, the fire will go out…

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, the basic premise of the story according to the back cover blurb. It is actually based on an apocryphal tale, which is a great idea. I grew up reading tales like this, the scary books of allegedly ‘true’ stories, and so I was eager to see where David Watkins took it as any tale of the Devil being let loose on the unwary in the misty moorlands of the UK should have a significant amount going for it. I wanted to enjoy this book, and… I actually did, yet that almost wasn’t the case.

Spoilers ahead. You have been warned!

I don’t normally mention a lot of plot points, however I believe there is a necessity for clarification which can’t really be achieved effectively without discussing certain elements of the plot. The reason it almost wasn’t the case is that hardly anything really happens for roughly the first 40% of the book. Now I understand that a lot of books like to give a decent build up before letting you have it with both barrels toward the end, and that is something of the case here, but I found the introduction of characters and circumstances far too long-winded. Were it not for the fact that I read it to review for the Gingernuts of Horror I would probably have put it aside. I’m glad I didn’t.

As you are already aware by the blurb, the fire does in fact go out. The reason for this is somewhat silly given the circumstances. If the fire has burned consistently for 150 years and this is part of local legend, surely you would keep an eye on the woodpile. When I was a kid we had log/coal fires and enough common sense to make sure that we always had fuel. There were upon occasion complications with deliveries, but we improvised, finding enough to burn to ensure that we didn’t go cold. We only had to keep the cold out, not the Devil, so priorities people… priorities!

We have now established through sheer stupidity the fire has gone out. There’s a bang on the door. Can it be? Is it? Yes… It’s our old friend Satan! Woo hoo! Finally we might get to the big nasties. Oh, no, wait… More chatting. It turns out that Satan is a big fan of the slow build; he seems to want to spread his particular brand of misery in subtle ways via individuals rather than en-masse, so what better place to do it than in a pub in the middle of nowhere with just a smattering of occupants.

When things finally do take a turn for the nasty it’s vicious and gruesome and yet I still found logic problems with certain aspects of the story. Very early on we are repeatedly introduced to the shadowy figures of monks standing some distance away in near-Arctic blizzard conditions. It later transpires that they are not exactly monks, nor are they indeed any kind of supernatural entity, they are just specific people recruited by Satan. With that being the case, they should realistically have frozen to death in the extreme harsh conditions, yet that isn’t what happened (obviously). What they are really all about is a twist which clouds the potential they would have had as something supernatural. It’s a shame as the majority of the book is very well structured.

So it’s not all bad news then? No, it’s overall a book which I can actually recommend. The characterisation may well have been lengthy, but that serves to leave the reader in no doubt as to the personalities of everyone involved and when bad things do start to happen it’s served with realistic dialogue and excellent pace. Aside from the few problems I mentioned earlier this is certainly one of the better books I have read recently, and I can place my hand on my heart and say that I wanted to read more of it as it appeared to be over much too soon. It’s not often that I actually get to say that the quality was such that I wished it was a much bigger book, but I did, because I reckon that another 50 pages, even 100 pages more, would have done the story a much greater justice.

This is David Watkins’ third novel, with the previous two forming part of a series with ‘The Original’s Return’ and ‘The Original’s Retribution’ with I dare say the possibility of more to come.
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On our Gingernutometer I am giving The Devil’s Inn a very crunchy four out of five as overall this was well written with interesting character development and interaction as well as some gut twisting scenes.

 ​THE DEVILS INN BY DAVID WATKINS

“I don’t want to die in a pub in Devon…” There is a pub in the heart of Dartmoor where a fire has burned every day for over one hundred and fifty years. It is said the fire never goes out. It is said that if it does, the Devil will appear and claim the souls of all inside. Tonight, seven strangers are stranded there during a fierce snowstorm. Tonight, the fire will go out… Praise for David Watkins "David Watkins writes very well: he has the ability to draw you in to his characters’ lives, which at the beginning are quite normal, and then of course you can't let go.” AMAZON "Great horror! I couldn't put the book down" 4.5*, Pamela Kinney, Ismellsheep.com

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