August 27, 2015

Book 41: The Devil's Detective

The Devil's Detective
Simon Kurt Unsworth

I have always found the idea of stories set in Hell to be interesting, and the location certainly offers a number of possibilities for writers who dare to venture into its depths. By combining this setting with an old-fashioned mystery plot and an extremely dark, bone-dry sense of humor, Simon Kurt Unsworth made it difficult for me to resist The Devil's Detective. His vision of Hell- a vividly imagined bureaucracy several evolutions away from its roots as the fire-and-brimstone torture pit of legend- is utterly captivating and full of the hopelessness, arbitrary regulations, and inherent unfairness that seem to govern many modern lives (and, crucially, many modern nightmares). There is searing, poignant cruelty in the governing demons' decision to allow a diplomatic delegation of Heaven's angels to arbitrarily liberate a few lucky souls; for many readers, this cruelty may well resonate in ways that the book's exaggerated scenes of gruesome guts and gore do not. Moreover, Unsworth populates his hellscape with humans who have no idea why they ended up there in the first place (a special kind of torment indeed) and a range of demons who have free reign to torment them. He rarely wastes an opportunity to remind readers that Hell is, at its core, a place of eternal torment, regardless of how well its human denizens have seemed to adjust to a new sense of tortured normalcy.

That said, the narrative nuts and bolts are not always utilized as effectively as the setting. The protagonist, the aptly-named Fool, is often so clueless that it becomes nearly impossible to sympathize with him, even though it is obvious from early on that he is a mere pawn in Hell's greater machinations. This tension manifests itself most directly in a pivotal clue that very clearly identifies the criminal culprit far earlier than Fool gets around to doing so; the resulting irony, however, is the frustrating kind, and it is nearly excruciating to wait for Fool to catch up. While I appreciate other demonstrations of Unsworth's finely tuned sense of irony (his main character is, after all, a detective who must investigate criminality in a place where it is encouraged and will never go punished), he may wander too far into the land of futility. In fact, he raises the stakes only at the very end of the novel, providing an inadequate payoff even if the murderer is duly identified. It's not all bad: the chase scenes are terrific and the violence is about as gruesome as it gets, occasionally becoming too much for me (even though, in hindsight, I probably should have expected it in a story set in a dreadfully realistic version of Hell). The characterization and overall plot, however, leave a bit to be desired.

Happily, these flaws do not prevent the book from having a shockingly appropriate ending, despite a reduced emotional impact. The various criminal threads are wrapped up as neatly as you would expect in a traditional detective story, and the secret is kept long (and well) enough to lend an air of intrigue for much of the book, even if Fool's blundering and the transparent narrative devices employed to keep him on the path often make for a rocky road. But the ending, a brutal twist that is wholly appropriate yet strangely unpredictable, is so brilliant, in its way, that it almost mitigates all of the book's other problems. I certainly expected a different conclusion and was pleasantly surprised to find that Unsworth chose a different ending, one that more closely fits the sense of futility that he so deliberately (and effectively) crafts throughout the novel. The Devil's Detective may not fully succeed as a detective story, but its vision of Hell is worth exploring for those interested in a surprisingly philosophical take on the subject.


Grade: B

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