![]() ![]() Digging into an unsolved double murder from the height of the Satanic Panic in southern California, Chandler buys the house the murders were committed in and begins to work: recreating the scene, conducting local interviews, collecting artifacts. The novel is narrated-mostly-by Gage Chandler, a true crime writer undertaking an ambitious new project. While I expected bloody twists and turns, the kinds of twists and turns this novel threw at me were intoxicating. The novel is intensely (if circuitously) invested in the condition of narration-who is speaking, why are they speaking, what are they getting out of it? It’s a picture of someone refusing to tell a story they’re already committed to tell, that they’re complicit in and profiting from. It’s keenly attuned to how people change, how we bring our pasts with us, how the spaces we enter shape us, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes violently. John Darnielle’s latest novel, Devil House, is a fascinating hybrid of gothic horror, the true crime format, and something stranger. ![]()
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