Thrillers & Suspense
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Devil House
From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, 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 when he was a child. 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 the 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 into the murders 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.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That's what his mother always told him when he was a child. 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 the 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 into the murders 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.
Editorial Reviews
"Devil House is terrific: confident, creepy, a powerful and soulful page-turner. I had no idea where it was going, in the best possible sense...It's never quite the book you think it is. It's better." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Suspenseful, brilliant and chaotically addicting, Devil House triumphs as a page-turning metafictional treatise on the power of narratives cloaked in the trappings of a certifiable true crime classic." ―Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle
"Devil House has all the gross-out hallmarks of horror and true crime while also questioning the moral implications of the genres."―Los Angeles Times
"Devil House can be read as an indictment of the true crime genre, specifically of the way stories are concocted to explain often-unfathomable tragedies, and of how some stories take precedence over others regardless of their truth. . . this is a story about what can't be told because the nature of telling selects some truths while setting others aside."―Slate
"‘What happens to the story; what happens to the teller; what happens to the people?' Darnielle renders this dilemma―and the bad-taste curiosity that compels people to read and write true crime despite reservations―with such depth and clarity that it feels like he's somehow culpable too. That's good fiction writing."―The A.V. Club
"Devil House is not a novel about karma or comeuppance. It is a portrait ― sometimes direct, sometimes refracted ― of a man realizing that his career, combined with his powerful imagination, has taken him far from his morals. In many such narratives, the career wins. Refreshingly, in Devil House, the morals do." ―NPR
"While I expected bloody twists and turns, the kinds of twists and turns this novel threw at me were intoxicating. . . Crime-thriller hooks, emotional and philosophical reflection, and one of the most subtle and devastating endings I've ever read: Devil House is a novel I know I'll be returning to."―Jack Casella Brookins, Chicago Re...
"Suspenseful, brilliant and chaotically addicting, Devil House triumphs as a page-turning metafictional treatise on the power of narratives cloaked in the trappings of a certifiable true crime classic." ―Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle
"Devil House has all the gross-out hallmarks of horror and true crime while also questioning the moral implications of the genres."―Los Angeles Times
"Devil House can be read as an indictment of the true crime genre, specifically of the way stories are concocted to explain often-unfathomable tragedies, and of how some stories take precedence over others regardless of their truth. . . this is a story about what can't be told because the nature of telling selects some truths while setting others aside."―Slate
"‘What happens to the story; what happens to the teller; what happens to the people?' Darnielle renders this dilemma―and the bad-taste curiosity that compels people to read and write true crime despite reservations―with such depth and clarity that it feels like he's somehow culpable too. That's good fiction writing."―The A.V. Club
"Devil House is not a novel about karma or comeuppance. It is a portrait ― sometimes direct, sometimes refracted ― of a man realizing that his career, combined with his powerful imagination, has taken him far from his morals. In many such narratives, the career wins. Refreshingly, in Devil House, the morals do." ―NPR
"While I expected bloody twists and turns, the kinds of twists and turns this novel threw at me were intoxicating. . . Crime-thriller hooks, emotional and philosophical reflection, and one of the most subtle and devastating endings I've ever read: Devil House is a novel I know I'll be returning to."―Jack Casella Brookins, Chicago Re...
Readers Top Reviews
Mike KitchenLucia
...but not often. This book was. I'm sure others have deconstructed true crime in fiction. Lord knows the genre begs for it. But John Darnielle does it so disorientingly. Darnielle's writing is so frustratingly rich and yet perplexingly spare–simultaneously. Parts of the book burn you out, but yet you can't put it down. Maybe a conceit or two didn't feel right to me, but I had to find out where he was going with them. And I found out where it went. And it was weird and banal–but correct. I got it.
megan mooreBristo
If you can tolerate constant perspective changes, font changes(?!?), and writing styles. Don’t get me wrong the book has a good story but the book overall is strange. Who edited this?
TrishyncoIsoldeEs
I was enjoying this at the beginning, but around the middle it started to drag. There were also too my sub plots..they did come together, but still...Struggled to finish and was disappointed with the ending 😕
Bob LewisYer DadT
I honest struggled quite a bit to compile my thoughts about this book. It certainly wasn't what I expected. Given the title and cover, I was expecting much more of a horror novel. This is not that. Instead, it's a prolonged look at something akin to the ethics of writing in the true crime genre. And that itself should be an interesting topic. The book does cover a lot of interesting ground. It just ultimately does so in a way that leaves the reader quite dissatisfied. That doesn't mean it's all bad, though. The author is clearly a skilled writer. Individual passages are, with a few exceptions, quite interesting and engaging. They're well written and occasionally even approach the level of poetry. But they simply don't connect into a well-structured narrative. In fact, the book manages to even describe itself. On page 273, describing one of the characters, the author writes: "No subject is off-limits; his long monologues are wide-ranging, but never incoherent, though you can see how inattentive people might think so." Indeed! That's Devil House in a nutshell. It's long philosophizing monologues are interesting in isolation and technically are connected to a central theme, but they simply don't make for a pleasant read. Every time the reader begins to get invested into one of the many disconnected storylines, the author promptly abandons it without resolution, switching to an entirely different topic. There's even a section in the middle written in a stylized font and a ham-fisted attempt at archaic English which severely undermines any serious point the author might have been trying to make. All of that criticism notwithstanding, though, I was prepared to actually give this book a reasonably good (if not stellar) review because I genuinely thought some of the ideas were fascinating. But then came the ending. I won't spoil it, but I will say that it completely undermines everything in the preceding 400 pages. It came out of nowhere, felt entirely like a cheat, and left me completely dissatisfied and even a bit angry that an author would waste my time that way. The ending was so bad it turned what was going to be a three-star review into a one-star one. This author is clearly a good writer. I may very well try his work again. But I cannot in good conscience recommend this particular book.
willIIJoseph Casw
I really like John’s books, but I didn’t like this one as much as his others. One section in particular seemed very tangential and not very interesting to me, and I only read it to make sure I didn’t miss anything. He is great at describing things and really sets a mood, so overall worth reading.
