Field Trip by Jeff Hammer

Field Trip by Jeff Hammer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Good things come to those who wait for books to go to the Clearance shelf at Half Price Books.

I found this one after numerous times finding copies online to be a bit too pricey. Having read Dying to Know by the same author, I wanted to see if this stacked up and it really did.

Tom and his girlfriend Lori are with their History Honors classmates and teacher, Mr. Cathcart, on a weekend visit to Franklin Forge Historic Village. The village is set in the colonial times when the Americans were at war with the British and fully immersed in the experience with the way they talk and dress. Staying at the Hogpenny Inn, the bus hits an incoming snowstorm.

Mr. Cathcart has the teenagers grab their bags and walk to the inn after getting into a small argument with the driver about the bus's ability to handle the snowy hill. The man seems to get pleasure in his students having to walk through the snow...he's that sort of teacher.

The owner of the inn is a man named Bowlick, and he has his son Ezra, and his daughter Amy show the teenagers and teacher to their rooms, girls in one wing and boys in another. Tom has a room to himself and tries to make some small talk with Ezra about his life in Franklin Forge.

No MTV, no movie theaters to go to and apparently his mother teaches Ezra and Amy all the subjects they need to actually graduate from high school. Despite that, they know how to do everything kids their age did back in the 1700s but Ezra doesn't seem happy when Tom asks about his future.

Tom and Lori try to get some alone time canoodling on the couch, but Mr. Cathcart interrupts them and both of the teens' eyes bug out at the sight of him. Their tyrant of a teacher has decided to dress the part, but his clothing is more of a foppish costume compared to the actually authentic colonial clothing the people of the inn wear. A short tour and then everyone is served dinner yet also, given a lesson about the history of the inn.

Bowlick tells that the Hogpenny Inn has its own ghost, Bloody Billy, and that finally seems to get everyone's attention...mostly. A young man named Billy Barrows was in love with daughter of the village preacher, but he would not wed his daughter to a person of low class as he was sent to fight in the American Revolution.

Coming back, the young man had money and wealth now to ask for the hand of Reverend Reece's daughter. He refused and soon learned that Billy earned the money by selling supplies to the army of the British king for his wealth and was deemed a traitor, having been on the run from Valley Forge for almost a year. Billy was tied to a post and shot dead with eight old-fashioned bullets.

It was said that untied the corpse did not fall but a glassy-eyed Billy removed his blindfold and walked away trailing bloody footprints behind him on the snow into the nearby woods. Since then, he comes back to the Hogpenny Inn still in search of his beloved.

The story told, the teens think they are free to go to bed, but Mr. Cathcart has other ideas. He wants to give them an essay test in the next hour to see what they have learned from Mr. Bowlick's talk about the inn and what they have learned in the village. Ready to hand out pencils and those trusty old blue books, one student, a girl named Kristi, is not afraid to tell her teacher what she thinks of the idea; it is a bunch of crap.

Kristi leaves the room and Tom, and the other students are left to be chewed out by Mr. Cathcart in an angry tirade that takes half an hour before the others are forced to take the test. Being so late, Tom and Lori have to hold off on the alone time as everyone gets ready for bed. Lori knocks on Tom's door fifteen minutes later and she asks him to come over to the other side of the inn where the girls are staying.

It isn't for a secret rendezvous because Lori tells Tom that Kristi is missing...and there is blood all over her room!

The other girls think Kristi was taken by Bloody Billy's ghost except for Lori and Tom is there when Mr. Cathcart shows up. Instead of being angry, he seems slightly amused at the sight of the torn up and bloody room. When the girls start mentioning Kristi might have been kidnapped, Mr. Cathcart snaps into another tirade as Tom finds evidence that someone did stage all of the blood, using it from the chickens killed to make dinner and that it isn't Kristi's. Also, he finds a cigarette butt under the bed and Kristi doesn't smoke...neither do ghosts.

Tom gets Mr. Cathcart to confess that he was a part of this, and he admits he had his two best students, Sid and Bill, "kidnap" Kristi to teach her a lesson of how they used to steal girls in colonial times and sell them off as slaves. Tom goes back to the wing where the boys are staying and finds the door to Sid and Bill's room is locked so he finally goes to get Bowlick since he should have a skeleton key.

He is not amused to find the rooms vandalized and sheets covered in blood or the fact that Mr. Cathcart isn't the very least upset about it. Bowlick has Amy and Ezra go respectively with Lori and Tom to search the inn for the three missing teens and it is clear to Bowlick, Tom and Lori that Mr. Cathcart is not a put together man. Amy and Ezra aren't amused to be woken up and going on a wild goose chase.

Then suddenly...more of the students start to disappear and then a note is found in Bowlick's modernized office. It is asking for $5,000 or "hostages" will start to be killed...

It's obvious that Mr. Cathcart is going crazy, but could there be someone else behind this awful display? It's also easy to tell you that there is no reason a ghost would need money, right?

As Field Trip progresses, we get a few reveals before the big one at the beginning of the dramatic third act. The climax is filled with a lot of suspense, and it leads to a very sad and bitter ending even when it seems danger has been averted but there is so much damage done it would be in poor taste if Hammer ended it any other way.

If you are lucky enough to find a copy of this book, I recommend it as more of a really good mystery/thriller but yet Field Trip still has some horror elements given the colonial setting as if it were something out of The Village.

Old world meets modern terror and an actually very bright main character in Tom. Besides Tom, the only other character we really get to know, and kind of like is Bowlick but why...that would be telling too much wouldn't it?

Here endeth the review.



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