The Siege of Trencher's Farm

The Siege of Trencher's Farm (1969) is a psychological horror/thriller novel by Scottish author Gordon Williams. It was first published by Secker & Warburg, and is better known for the 1971 film adaptation Straw Dogs (starring Dustin Hoffman) by Sam Peckinpah. A 2011 remake of that film under the same name was made to less favourable reviews, both films bearing little resemblance to the novel. The Siege of Trencher's Farm was republished by Titan Books as in 2011 as Straw Dogs, to coincide with the release of the remake. Plot George Magruder, an American professor of English from Philadelphia, moves with his British wife Louise and their eight-year-old daughter Karen to Trencher's Farm in the town of Dando, Cornwall, England, so that George can finish a book he is writing about the (fictitious) 18th-century diarist Branksheer, "a complete man". George and Louise are having marital troubles, causing Louise to become frustrated and, though he wants to, George has difficulty in relating to the locals at the local pub, The Inn. The locals tell Louise the story of Soldier's Field, in which locals who killed a rapist escaped justice, as none of them would talk. In the climax of the book, child killer Henry Niles is being transported back to prison when his ambulance hits ice and crashes. Niles sees blood and flees, worried that he will be blamed, and George accidentally hits him in a snow drift with his car and takes him back to the farm, not knowing who he is. At the same time, a mentally disabled child, Janice Heddon, runs away from a Christmas party. George realises who Niles is and phones for the doctor and police, but the town is cut off to the police by the weather. The doctor was already attending to Janice's mother, and when the locals find out Janice is missing and that the child killer Niles is at Trencher's Farm, Janice's father Tom and his friends knock out the doctor and form an armed vigilante mob to break in. A community leader Bill arrives, but is accidentally killed by the mob. Tom reminds the locals of Soldier's Field, leading them to believe that if they attack as a group none will be blamed. George has to fight them off and protect his family, changing from ordered and civilised into enraged and animalistic. Development history The idea for the book came from the panic and sense of siege where Williams lived in Devon when "The Mad Axeman" Frank Mitchell escaped from nearby Dartmoor Prison.