From New York Times bestselling author and Mountain Goats singer/songwriter John Darnielle comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success – and a movie adaptation – to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for his big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s.
Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell – his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected – back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.
Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory and artistic obsession. Darnielle is a multi-talented musician and author, whose debut novel Wolf in White Van was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction. With Devil House, he continues to carve a name for himself in experimental, genre-bending fiction.
With the writer as the narrator, this story has elements of metafiction as it details the ins and outs of writing true crime, asking us why this genre continues to be so popular. This is a complex read with multiple narrators and even a medieval tale –complete with old-English styled font – included within, yet once the pieces begin to fall together, Devil House is deliciously satisfying.
Devil House is a weird, wonderful and genre-defying story in which everything is not as it seems. True crime fanatics will love this.
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