I do enjoy when an author has a message, but this one would require way to much time and analysis for me to get the point, I believe.ĭarnielle's writing is quite pleasing, however, and obviously he has an incredible imagination. I'm not sure if it was just too cerebral for me. I also loved the details of Devil House itself it's sordid history and final chapters. I loved what it had to say about story telling, particularly true crime story telling. There were glimmers of gold throughout this book, don't get me wrong. It kicked me out of the entire story and then it was very hard for me to start to care again. I was finding the different sections enjoyable, but that one.dang. There were entire sections where I was unclear as to who the narrator was.Īlso, there was one part in particular, part four, I believe, that I have no freaking idea why it was included at all. Because of this, it felt extremely disjointed. The book was broken into different parts and to me, each part felt like it's own short story. I won't even go about a weak attempt to summarize this story. I'm not mad about it, but if I said I wasn't disappointed, I'd be lying. From this cover, and even from the synopsis, I was getting The Amityville Horror vibes, mixed with a little Sinister, the 2012-supernatural Horror film starring Mr. Y'all, I preordered the heck out of this book. I put off reviewing this one for a while. (Jan.Ahhhh, Devil House, Devil House, Devil House.

Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, the Gernert Company. It operates perfectly on many levels, resulting in a must-read for true crime addicts and experimental fiction fans alike. This masterwork of suspense is as careful with its sharp takes as it is with the bread crumbs it slowly drops on the way to its stunning end. Gage’s multilayered narrative of the Devil House murders slowly builds from conjecture to the victims’ ventriloquized voices, lending itself well to Darnielle’s themes about the artifice of the genre: “Formalities, when carefully tended, quietly congregate to make form,” Gage notes.

Interspliced with Gage’s investigation are long excerpts from one of his previous books, The White Witch of Morro Bay, which recounts the gruesome end for two teenage boys who broke into their teacher’s apartment.

True crime writer Gage Chandler has spent the last five years living in the “Devil House” in Milpitas, Calif., where he’s been working on a book about an unsolved murder that took place there in 1986, during the height of the Satanic Panic. In this riveting metafictional epic, Mountain Goats singer-songwriter Darnielle ( Universal Harvester) flays the conventions of true crime to reveal the macabre and ordinary brutality behind sensationalized stories of violence.

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