The Devil’s Detective

Simon Kurt Unsworth

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

Welcome to hell...

...where skinless demons patrol the lakes and the waves of Limbo wash against the outer walls, while the souls of the Damned float on their surface, waiting to be collected. When an unidentified, brutalised body is discovered, the case is assigned to Thomas Fool, one of Hell's detectives, known as 'Information Men’. But how do you investigate a murder where death is commonplace and everyone is guilty of something?

A stunningly original blend of crime, horror and suspense, The Devil’s Detective is a bold new thriller that will shock and amaze.

'With the character of Fool, Simon Kurt Unsworth has crafted a hero among the damned. Original, tense, and full of twists, this is one hell of a great read.'

'Dark and luminous, compelling and insidious, Devil's Detective is a novel that transcends genre.'

Review by Ben Macnair (300615) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Rating 7/10
The Devil’s Detective is one of those novels where the weight of ideas sometimes threatens to overwhelm the narrative drive, and the characterisation. So, we have Hell, which is peopled by Demons, and policed by Angels and Information Men, Humans, who have failed to get into heaven are crammed into every corner, and Thomas Fool, an under-paid, and over-worked Information Man already has enough on his hands, but when he is asked to look into a death, the type of death that is usually ignored in Hell, there is nothing he can do but investigate it.

This is not the hell that we imagine from the bible. It is not fire and brimstone, but more of a continuation of life as it is on earth. We have humans in poorly paid jobs, with no hope of change or development, and their bosses are Demons, with little sympathy. They are stripped of their souls and memories, and their only hope of escapes is a death, which sends them to Purgatory, and they start the whole birth, work, death cycle all over again. At first two murders are nothing, but when they start to mount up, Fool is forced to work alongside two other Information Men, Gordie and Summer, but when things take a turn for the worse, all of their lives, and the whole of hell is in danger.

At over 350 pages The Devil’s Detective is a sturdy work to get through, and at times the action and pacing could do with some work, but it shows that Simon Kurt Unsworth is a writer that is worth watching out for, it you like crime fiction which has an undertone of horror.
Ben Macnair (30th June 2015)