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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