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The Devil's Detective: A Novel (Thomas Fool Series) Kindle Edition
Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped "Do Not Investigate" and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner—extravagant even by Hell's standards—everything changes. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so the Bureaucracy sends Fool to identify and track down the killer. . . . But how do you investigate murder in a place where death is common currency? Or when your main suspect pool is a legion of demons? With no memory of his past and only an irresistible need for justice, Fool will piece together clues and follow a trail that leads directly into the heart of a dark and chaotic conspiracy. A revolution is brewing in Hell . . . and nothing is what it seems.
The Devil's Detective is an audacious, highly suspenseful thriller set against a nightmarish and wildly vivid world. Simon Kurt Unsworth has created a phantasmagoric thrill ride filled with stunning set pieces and characters that spring from our deepest nightmares. It will have readers of both thrillers and horror hanging on by their fingernails until the final word. In Hell, hope is your worst enemy.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateMarch 3, 2015
- File size1734 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Hugh Howey, author of WOOL
“Damned good. . . . An entertaining Dantean spin on the police procedural.”
—Financial Times
“A grand, nightmarish page-turner that will have you riveted no matter how much you'd prefer to look away.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This might be the most whimsical murder story ever told. The Devil's Detective is relentlessly creative, fearlessly witty, and completely twisted. Naturally, I loved it.”
—Chelsea Cain, bestselling author of One Kick
“A clever spin on the traditional police procedural. . . . We’ve seen other novels set in Hell, but we haven't seen a Hell quite like this.”
—Booklist
“Dark and luminous, compelling and insidious, The Devil’s Detective is a novel that transcends genre.”
—Michael Marshall Smith, bestselling author of The Intruders and The Straw Men
“Hell as the setting for a noir investigation turns out to be as fun as it sounds in The Devil's Detective. Inventive and pacy, Simon Kurt Unsworth has created a world—underworld?—distinctly his own.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist and The Damned
“Inventive and intriguing—Unsworth turns a journey through Hell into a heavenly read.”
—Alison Littlewood, author of A Cold Season
“A layered, fascinating first novel that will put readers firmly in mind of Clive Barker as they indulge in the gorgeous detail of Hell and all of its squalid denizens. The Devil’s Detective is an ambitious yet accomplished piece of work that will leave the reader not only wanting more Thomas Fool but hoping against hope that the reality of Hell isn’t anywhere near as bad as the version in Unsworth’s imagination.”
—ThisIsHorror.co.uk
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The day began with Gordie, who knocked on Fool’s door and entered the room without waiting. He bustled over to Fool, waving a blue-ribboned canister in front of him like a torch that had lost its light as Fool pulled himself up onto an elbow, rubbing one hand across eyes that were thick with sleep. He was pleased to see that in Gordie’s other hand was a mug, steam curling out from it and bringing with it the smell of weak, thin coffee. Gordie set the mug down on the table by Fool’s bed and said, “One came through. It’s blue. I’ve never seen a blue before.”
Fool picked up the mug and sipped, glad of the heat of the coffee on his tongue even if the taste was buried beneath its scald. He twisted, careful not to spill his drink, and looked up at the high, small window, trying to work out from the light coming in around the grimy linen blind what time of day it was. Beams of gray, sickly illumination crawled across the wall at low angles, throwing shadows from right to left, meaning it was still morning. Escort duty hadn’t finished until . . . when? Sometime between the bars starting to close and the factories starting to open, he thought. He had returned in darkness, that he remembered, although his eyes had populated the nighttime shadows with after-images of light, shifting and dancing at the corners of his vision. If it was still morning, he had had only a few hours’ sleep. He groaned and sipped more of his coffee.
“It’s blue,” said Gordie again, helpfully, holding out the canister, its tangle of blue ribbon hanging down in loops. “It’s a blue, it’s just arrived. I saw it was a blue; we never get them, so I thought I’d better bring it to you. I wouldn’t have woken you otherwise, you know. It might be a Fallen.” As he spoke, Gordie was doing the thing he thought Information Men should do, darting his eyes around the room and looking for things. For clues, although what they might be, Fool had no idea. His room was tiny, as all theirs were, and usually contained little other than his bed, a table, a small set of open-faced drawers, a rail for his smock shirts and trousers, and a tiny bookcase that held no books except for his Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell.
Today, however, it also contained the feather.
Gordie saw it as Fool sat up fully and took the canister from his colleague’s hand. The younger man’s mouth fell open and his hands dropped to his sides and Fool smiled despite himself, despite the early morning and the lack of sleep, because Gordie looked, for the shortest moment, like a child, a thing of innocence and joy. There was awe on his face, and his skin looked clean and smooth, youthful, his eyes opening wide.
The feather was lying on the top shelf of the bookcase, alongside the Guide and Fool’s gun, and it was beautiful. Curved, the shaft and barbs gleaming, it was perhaps a foot long and whiter than bone and it shivered lightly as Gordie walked toward it and reached out.
“Where . . . ?” he started, and then stopped loosely. “Where . . . ,” he started again and then, again, stopped. Fool didn’t reply. He looked at the feather and his eyes watered mildly, as though the brightness of the previous day had returned to the room for a moment.
“It was a gift,” said Fool, “from one of the angels.” Even saying it made him feel foolish, little silly Fool, because in Hell no one received gifts.
“Can I?” asked Gordie and Fool nodded. His colleague lifted the feather, gasped slightly, and turned to Fool.
“It’s beautiful, like Summer,” he said and then started, glancing down at the feather with a look on his face that Fool thought was almost suspicion.
“Yes,” Fool replied. What else was there to say? Gordie was still holding the feather and suddenly, sharply, he wanted him to put it down, to let it alone, so that he could pick it back up himself. He took another sip of his coffee and nodded at the tube.
“A blue?”
“A blue!” said Gordie, the excitement coming back to his voice. He placed the feather back on the bookcase and twisted the cap off the tube, emptying out the roll of paper from within.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” said Fool. “Let’s see what Hell wants to show us today.”
The body bobbed facedown in the water about six feet out from the shore, snagged on a clump of branches and leaves. It spun as it bobbed, caught in eddies that sent the water at the lake’s edge into choppy arrhythmia. Despite the dark oiliness of Solomon Water, it was obvious that the naked corpse was human; its skin was pale and torn, hanging in loose ribbons that exposed the darker meat of muscles and flesh.
“I saw it on my way to work,” the man by Fool was saying. “I mean, I saw the flash as I passed the lake, but I didn’t see the body until a few minutes later.”
“The flash?” asked Fool.
“There was a blue flash, I was up on the road and I saw a flash from down here, but I couldn’t see what it was because of the trees. It was a blue flash, and then lots of blue light went up into the sky. I came down here to see what it was.”
“Do you normally check out the things you see on your way to work?” asked Fool.
“If there’s a chance that it might be a Fallen,” replied the man. “It was a blue flash, I’ve told you. I thought it might have been a Fallen and I could claim it as mine. But it was only a body.”
Ah yes, thought Fool. This is only a body, so it’s not important, just a dead human, but it could have been a Fallen. Finding a Fallen was rumored to be a way of guaranteeing an Elevation, of escaping Hell’s grip. “You must have been disappointed,” said Fool. The man, whose name Fool had already lost but which would be in Gordie’s notebook, tensed, hearing Fool’s irritation.
“Look, I’m sorry he’s dead, but people die all the time, every day, don’t they? We’re never safe, are we? It’s not unusual, is it? And I’ve missed work waiting for you, and I’ll lose food for missing a day. At least I waited.”
“True,” said Fool, unable to disagree with anything the man had said. There were murders every day and every night in Hell, too many to count, more than they could ever hope to investigate. Most went unreported except for the details in the canisters that fell from the pneumatic pipes, wrapped in red ribbon or thread, which Fool normally read and then marked with a “DNI” stamp for Did Not Investigate before putting them back into a canister and firing them up the pipe, sending them on to Elderflower. The only reason he was here now was that the Bureaucracy had registered the blue flash and had also wondered about the possibility of it being a Fallen. The canister had been blue ribbon–wrapped, and they had standing orders to investigate any of those that came through as a priority; it was in his Guide. Blue canisters arrived irregularly, and in all Fool’s time in Hell, over five years now, there had never been a Fallen and he suspected there never would be. The rebel angels were already here, and the only ones left in Heaven were surely the followers and the trusted now, the arms of fury like Balthazar and of mercy like Adam; none of them would fall.
“We need the body,” said Fool to Gordie, turning away from the man at his side, focus shifting, “before the things in there take him.” Already, the body had jerked several times, and Fool suspected it was being eaten from below. Solomon Water was vast and full, its inky depths home to things that Fool hoped never to see. Not long ago, one had come ashore; it had eaten hundreds before being driven back into the water by a crowd of demons and humans in one of the rare moments when the two groups had worked together, brandishing flame and hurling rocks against it. This close to shore, and with only one body, it was unlikely that anything bigger than scavengers would approach, but there was always a chance. It was a chance that Fool did not want to take.
Gordie went to the water’s edge and stepped gingerly in, the liquid lapping over his shoes as he moved out from the shore. As Fool waited, he turned back to the man. “Did you see anything when you got here?” he asked. He knew Gordie had already asked this, but the man might remember something new, describe it differently, or reveal something extra.
“No, just the body,” the man replied. What was his name? “There were clothes near the water, but that was it.” The clothes were in a bag by Fool’s feet; he would look them over later. They were torn and bloody, that much he had seen already, and smeared with mud. Just up the slope, in among the trees, he had found a patch of churned and damaged ground, the earth freshly torn. Blood was puddled in the newly created hollows and had started to coagulate into a thick, brittle mess. Four teeth had been scattered around the saturated ground like frozen tears; Fool had picked them up and placed them in his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. One still had a piece of gum attached to it, dangling pinkly from the root, bloody and wormlike.
A crowd had gathered farther up the slope, perhaps ten or fifteen people massed beyond the trees and standing in loose clumps. They had also come in case it was a Fallen, he suspected, had seen the blue flash but hadn’t been as close as the nameless man, or had heard about it afterward and come anyway. They looked lost, aimlessly staring down the slope, their features impossible to make out at this distance. They were all human, though, that Fool could tell; there were no demons among them, although if the crowd remained long enough those others would come, attracted by the crumpling hope and the disappointment and the smell of sweat and despair. They would come to feed.
“Sir,” said Gordie from behind Fool. He had the body at the edge of the water but was struggling to pull it onto the land, and Fool went to help him, taking a grip on the corpse’s legs and lifting as Gordie clambered onto the lakeside and dragged it by the shoulders. Fool didn’t like the way the flesh felt, cold and clammy and loose, shifting under his fingers, and he was glad to be able to drop it on the ground once Gordie had made his way out from the water. It landed bonelessly on its back, and Fool winced at the state of it.
“Oh fuck,” the man breathed from behind Fool. Fool had forgotten he was there, and now he went to the man (West, he thought, suddenly remembering the man’s name, West), ushering him back and pointing at the others near the trees. West had gone pale, paler than before, and was gulping helplessly, staring at the battered body.
“Please, go up there and wait for me,” Fool said.
“Who could have done that?” asked West, and then doubled over and was sick, vomiting explosively onto the ground by Fool’s feet. The smell of it was sharp and sour, the vomit itself watery and gray. West hadn’t eaten much recently; no one had.
“I don’t know,” said Fool, but suspected he did.
The dead person was, had been, male. There were bite marks around the base of the flaccid penis, scabbed and angry red gashes that covered the scrotum and the lower belly; more lined the stomach and chest. One nipple was gone, the breast topped by an open wound. There were one or two smaller, circular marks on the dead man’s skin, and he thought that these were probably the marks from Solomon’s inhabitants, small questing bites from the things at the bottom of the water’s food chain taken before the larger creatures came to feed. The other bites, Fool recognized. They came from demons, were marked by a puckering of the flesh around the wound where the skin had scorched from the demon’s heat. There were crescent marks across the dead man’s face and neck from where his attacker had punched and hit him, these marks fresher, still not budded into full bruises. One cheek was torn open and flapping, revealing a lacerated gum and bloody holes for the missing teeth that currently sat in Fool’s pocket. He crouched, peering at the ruined face.
The water had already started to bloat and wrinkle the corpse’s skin, the eyelids pulling away from the eyeballs slightly. More of the small circular bites were dotted around the eyes, almost lost in the angry marks from the beating. The sclera of the left eye was blood-filled and the eye itself turned out, as though the force of the blows had snapped it from its moorings. Tears that were tinged with blood wept from the eyes in slow trickles.
“Do we take him to the Garden?” asked Gordie.
“No,” said Fool. Something about the body bothered him. It wasn’t the violence inflicted upon it, exactly; he saw similarly damaged bodies most days. No, it was the eyes, he thought; not their bloodiness or the fact that one had been so savagely abused that it had turned away from its companion, but the expression they contained. They were helpless, the helplessness of someone who saw his own death, or something worse, approaching and could do nothing about it. “I want Morgan to see him. I want him questioned.”
“Questioned? Why?”
Fool’s hand went to the feather that was safely tucked into his inner pocket, the feel of it reassuring him for some reason. “Because I want to know who did this to him,” he said, and he did not add and catch them and punish them because he knew that, hope for it though he might, it was unlikely to happen. This was Hell, and sins here went often unnoticed and almost always unpunished. The best he could hope for was knowledge, something to put in a report to Elderflower so that he could pass it on to his masters, for information. He put his hand in his pocket, not the one containing the teeth or the feather, and fingered his badge of office, feeling the indentations that formed the words “Information Man,” and grinned humorlessly. “I want to know,” he said again.
“I’ll arrange transport,” said Gordie.
“No,” said a new voice, “he is mine.”
Trouble, little Fool, Fool had time to think, and then something hit him and sent him sprawling into the mud beside the body.
Product details
- ASIN : B00N6PCZPE
- Publisher : Anchor (March 3, 2015)
- Publication date : March 3, 2015
- Language : English
- File size : 1734 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 306 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0804172927
- Best Sellers Rank: #869,295 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #541 in Literary Satire Fiction
- #2,122 in Noir Crime
- #3,974 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
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But rarely have I seen that idea used as effectively and powerfully as it is in The Devil’s Detective, a book whose setting is original, unforgettable, and inextricably linked to its characters, its plot, and its mood. Because its setting is Hell, and in that blasted, hopeless landscape, author Simon Kurt Unsworth crafts a piece of noir unlike just about anything else I’ve read.
Because, here’s the thing about Hell: how do you make a mystery set in Hell? How do you tell a story about a murder in a place where torment is constant, where torture is everywhere, where nightmares live and breathe and the entire point of existence is to live in regret and pain? And more than that, when an environment is shaped around a lack of hope, how can any crime ever be solved – because wouldn’t that offer hope and justice in a place defined by their absence?
Rather than dodge those questions, Unsworth bakes them into the DNA of his book, following Fool, one of Hell’s Information Men – a sinner himself – who finds himself doing something he’s never done before: actually investigating a crime. To be sure, this is an unusual crime – not only was a human murdered, but his soul was reaped from his body – but Fool’s investment in the crime, and his dedication to understanding it, feels like a slow, seismic shift in Hell. And his interest – his insistence that this soul matters, that even Hell must have rules – indeed changes everything around him, and throughout Hell. And that change becomes as much a part of the story as the investigation itself.
But, oh, that investigation. This is a labyrinthine case, make no mistake about it, and one that feels heavily indebted to Chandler and Hammett along the way; like those authors, Unsworth follows his detective through a slew of encounters with citizens from all over Hell, through seedy environments and upper class “suburbs” (of Hell), through high-level politics and through abused citizens. But Unsworth makes it all his own, giving us a Hell unlike any other that I’ve read – a Hell that has left behind the torture and nightmares of Dante and resembles nothing so much as a hopeless, bleak industrial society, an inner-city where brutality and violence are just part of the day-to-day life. And as Unsworth dives into the life of Hell and its occupants, his world continues to flesh out, and we start to see just how much his characters – and these crimes – are a function of this world, and not a recent addition. And once that link becomes clear, the story becomes richer, because it’s about more than just one crime – it’s about our hero, and about life in Hell, and about this bizarre, dark world that Unsworth has crafted for us.
Make no mistake, though: this is a dark world. Much of what makes Unsworth’s novel work is that he allows Hell to be every bit as nightmarish and disturbing as it should be. The demons are horrific, and their relationship with humans is brutal and upsetting. The violence is shocking and constant; the atmosphere bleak; the world unforgiving. And the cost is high, and that matters here, because as soon as you care about the world and have hope, it can be taken from you. And that’s the nature of Hell.
And yet, even with all of that, The Devil’s Detective never becomes nihilistic. Instead, it gives us a rich, compelling hero in Fool, who becomes a crusader for lost causes, a lone light in the darkness, and a hope in a world without it. That’s heady material, and makes Fool’s quest all the more engaging, and his development as a character all the more rewarding, as he finds himself becoming noticed by Hell…and then respected by Hell. It turns a noir detective something richer and more profound, and its constant evolution as a book only makes it work all the more.
In short? I loved this book, plain and simple. I loved its complicated, incredible world, and the astonishing array of characters. (I haven’t even touched on Unsworth’s most fascinating character, The Man of Plants and Flowers, who defies all characterization.) I loved its complex story, which uses the framework of a noir tale as a starting point and turns it into something wholly else. And I loved Fool, whose noble quest in the face of horrors becomes as gripping and important as solving the murder that starts it all. I loved the world, the story, the ideas, and the writing, and I can’t wait to see what else Unsworth has in him to come.
In many ways the author has reinvented the "horror" genre with this mystery set inside the boundaries of Hell with stark reminiscences of our everyday world. This is a place where humans are sent to serve demons as a slave, having no knowledge of their past sins...only the realization that they must have done something terribly wrong and are now paying the price for it.
The story centers on Thomas Fool, who is one of Hell's Information Men. His two partners are Gordie and Summer. They are actually police detectives who investigate the countless crimes taking place in Hell every week, knowing it is fruitless and that few citizens actually want the crimes resolved.
These police investigators, however, have full autonomy with regards to each investigation they apply their skills to. They have the authority to question any citizen of Hell and visit whatever sections of Hell they want in the pursuit of an active investigation.
While investigating the murder of a human being near the Lake of Fire that's occupied by hungry demons, Fool begins a journey that will slowly change his life and how he views the things around him. What Fool soon realizes is that the murderer is a serial killer, and the deaths keep racking up as the Information Man draws closer to its final conclusion, suspecting that a monstrous demon has to be behind the deaths of so many humans.
What made this novel unrelenting to read, at least for me, is not only the terrific concept of what Hell is, but the writing style of the author and the unusual characters he creates for his story. There's the Man of Plants and Flowers, the angels Adam and Balthazar, Elderflower, and Rhakshasas and the other horrific demons that live off the agony experienced by humans.
It took nearly two-dozen pages for me to get used to Hell as it's described and the somewhat flowery prose of the author. The writing style, which wouldn't work for other novels, turned out to be absolutely perfect for this one. It seemed to add a flowing richness to the vivid descriptions and subtle texture of the story and made you want to continue.
I also kept seeing the actor, Clive Owen in a dark overcoat, as Thomas Fool, an investigator who has become complacent in his solving of the endless crimes. It isn't until this particular case lands in his lap that he's able to sweep the dusty cobwebs away from his murky vision and pursue the investigation to its mind-blowing resolution.
I should also mention that the use of so many adverbs and adjectives would normally turn me off to a novel, but not this one. After a day of reading, I found myself secretly hooked by the author's prose and loved the way he made everything appear in your mind with such utter clarity. It made the story of Hell and Thomas Fool more engrossing and detailed to one's imagination.
I will add that the novel ends in such a way as to invite a sequel, which I hope the author is already writing.
So, this book is highly recommended for its sheer brilliance and originality. It's both a mystery and a horror novel, and I trust that Hollywood already has its keen eyes focused upon the story. This would make one hell of a movie!
Top reviews from other countries
The book follows an Information Man aka detective in Hell named Fool. He is tasked by Hell’s incomprehensible bureaucracy to investigate murders in the infernal realm, which resembles a 1940s/50s town on the edge of a dying rural area (in my reading of it anyway). The setting synchs nicely with the noirish voice of the book, but Fool isn’t exactly your typical noir detective. For one, he never actually solves any murders. Every investigation gets closed with paperwork that says “Did Not Investigate,” and he works for the demons instead of being some sort of lone knight. The dead never get justice when they are killed by demons. Instead, they are tossed back into the seas of limbo, where will be plucked out again at some future point to begin their torment again.
And torment it is, for those trapped in Hell are forced to endure never-ending labour for the demons with no source of light or happiness in their lives. Instead, there is only the constant existential anxiety of when not if those same demons will decide to turn on them and devour their souls. There’s no escape, not even for the demons, who were here long before the humans came and don’t seem that happy about Hell themselves. It feels like a manifesto against capitalism at points — the entire world seems dedicated to the torture of humans by the machinery of work, with overseers/managers being actual demons that want to feed on their workers’ souls — but it’s a familiar enough world that most readers will see their own personal Hell reflected in it.
Everything changes when the angels arrive, though. Fool is ordered to escort a group of them through Hell at the beginning of the book, when they are on a mission to seek out souls for ascension to Heaven. And this is where the truly chilling aspect of Hell becomes manifest. For the angels reveal there is just the tiniest shred of hope for escape from Hell — but it seems almost random. And it’s that hope that highlights all the other suffering. If there was no chance whatsoever of escape, perhaps the damned would eventually grow accustomed to their suffering or maybe even try to do something about it. But instead they are always captured by hope of escape to Heaven, even though they stand nearly no chance of ever seeing that hope realized. Hell is truly to be found in hope.
But that changes with the angels’ arrival, as Fool and the angels are drawn into a very curious string of murders in which the dead seem to be released from Hell. The question is who’s behind the murders and what they want, as the killings kick off a rebellion of sorts in Hell, where the damned rise up against their demon masters and Fool is caught in the middle. By the time he solves the mystery, all of Hell has been transformed. And even the demons don’t know what comes next.
The Devil’s Detective is a truly fabulous read that combines a number of genres into a chilling, terrifying and yet truly beautiful story. You’ll never think of Hell the same way again.
Das Besondere an dem Buch war für mich die Darstellung einer Hölle, die die körperliche Folter durch Hoffnungslosigkeit und beliebigen, willkürlichen Terror ersetzt hat. Die Hoffnungs- und Trostlosigkeit des Settings wird mit sparsamen Strichen ausgezeichnet rüber gebracht. Unsworth hat unzweifelhaft ein Gespür für das Setting von Szenen (Verfolgungsjagden, Kämpfe) und ist auch sehr geschickt mit dem Ausmaß an Informationen über die Hölle und die Protagonisten des Buches, die er an den Leser weiter gibt. Obwohl Fool nicht unbedingt wie ein Sympathieträger wirkt, so wächst einem doch die Sturheit dieses Underdogs ans Herz. Insgesamt ist das Buch kein Stimmungsaufheller, das wäre aber auch ganz und gar unpassend. Wir befinden uns schließlich in der Hölle.
Natürlich gäbe es - wenige - Verbesserungen. Gerade im ersten Drittel wiederholen sich z.B. manche Ermittlungsschritte zu stark. Wenn ich aber als Vergleich die Bobby Dollar Trilogie von Tad Williams heranziehe, wirkt Unsworth Buch deutlich frischer und wagemutiger. Eine sehr positive Überraschung und unbedingte Empfehlung.
It's a great, grimy setting that doesn't fall so in love with it's own squalor that you get sick of it: humans live in starvation and filth, and get preyed upon by demons. Thomas Fool just stamps cases 'Did not investigate' and moves on. Hell notices people, lets them rise up, and then crushes them. It lends a great edge to the book that means even during Fool's successes, you still feel a sense of danger for him.
If there's anything else I'd say, it would be that I like Unsworth's characterisation: whether it's humans, angels or demons he has the knack of painting people in shades of grey, but without making his antagonists too familiar or spoiling his protagonists by giving them unforgivable faults. It's something that I like from the works of Chandler: we care more about Eddie Mars in The Big Sleep because we've met him enough to have formed an emotional bond. When he steps out into a hail of bullets fired by his own men, we feel both triumph and pain because we know him as a person. Unsworth has that same skill of showing us enough of his villains that we invest in them, even in their deaths.
Great book. I recommend reading it.
But it is precisely this ability to covey the sheer mind numbing horror and hopelessness of Hell that makes this book so damn good. Unsworth's Hell IS hell. The dank, dangerous, sickening environment. The petty bureaucracy. The unfairness, the pointlessness, the inescapable repetition of days without hope, without change, without end. The shrug of shoulders meaning 'this is the way it is'. Even reading it drags you down into a pit bordering on despair. Or would...if not for the wonderful Thomas Fool, Information Man, investigator of all things murderous. Angry, angry Fool and the ways in which he is growing, developing, contrasting with the stagnant world around him. Pushing back against the tide. Oh what a character he is. And I am so very interested in where he is going to take us.
This is a deliciously dark and terrifying debut from Unsworth, the kind of creative imagination that is both worrying and exciting. Clever, chilling, and genuinely different, the book defies characterisation and offers a truly nightmarish vision that is impossible to ignore. Thankfully, I already have a review copy of The Devil's Evidence so I don't have to wait to jump right back into this world.
The wider questions of whether you have flesh and blood in hell and whether every minute spent in hell’s confines is filled with unrelenting torment are given fair consideration here and the result is a hell that reinvents itself and that presents a challenge rather than a one way ticket to eternal damnation.
To my mind, this reads like a detective novel rather than a horror novel. As you would expect, given the setting, there are some lurid descriptions of effluent, gore and the consumption of souls; all of which is in keeping with the story and does not spill over into bloodlust.
Fool may miss a few leads but I reserve a good deal of sympathy for him. After all, would you want to be tasked with finding an evildoer in hell?
Wickedly good stuff.