The Devil's Evidence

May 23, 2016
In British author Unsworth’s entertaining second whodunit set mainly in the netherworld (after 2015’s The Devil’s Detective), the Bureaucracy of Hell tasks Thomas Fool, commander of the Information Office of Hell, with identifying the motive behind a series of fatal arsons, an assignment made even harder by the intervention of the Evidence, a newly created rival and more powerful government entity composed of demons. Meanwhile, Fool is dispatched to heaven at the request of its bureaucracy after someone’s neck is broken, a death that some members of the angelic host insist was accidental. More suspicious deaths in heaven follow, and Fool is baffled by tracks that suggest something with claws, scales, and tentacles was responsible. The more Fool learns, the more he believes that the fatalities in both realms are connected, and that the creatures described as looking like dancers may be responsible. The ultimate solution is a fairly clued surprise, and Unsworth’s creative worldbuilding leaves plenty of room for a sequel. Agent: John Berlyne, Zeno Agency.

May 1, 2016
Thomas Fool, Satan's top crime solver, is back, and, more than ever, you wonder what awful deeds this poor wretch did in life to deserve such a relentlessly dreadful calling. This follow-up to Unsworth's debut novel, The Devil's Detective (2015), finds Hell's "Information Man" once again dealing with wanton, inexplicable, and unauthorized violence visited upon the Eternally Condemned. In this case, it's a series of fires--"Six, maybe seven, or even eight"--that have fatally burned living souls all over the netherworld. (And yes, Hell is notorious for fire. But if you paid attention to this novel's immediate predecessor, you're aware that these days, there are many more awful things that can happen to you Down There than being roasted on a spit 24/7.) As Fool is struggling to determine a pattern for this homicidal arson, his masters dispatch him and a delegation of demons to Heaven, aka the Not-Nearly-As-Bad-Place-Up-Yonder, where, hard as it may be to believe, there are also a handful of unexplained murders that may or may not be linked to the ones down below. Despite being disdained by Heaven's angelic elite while being tortured by Hell's roughneck "Evidence" specialists, Fool doggedly presses on with his inquiry, finding almost as many distressing similarities between Heaven and Hell as he does unsettling contrasts. Both, for instance, have bureaucracies that are arbitrary and shortsighted in dispensing judgment. "There are hierarchies even [in Heaven]," Fool thinks to himself. "Even in the place of perfection there are those who are more powerful, more perfect." Soon, both hierarchies are goaded from uneasy detente to total war, and Fool finds himself running out of time and resources to figure out who, or what, is behind this unholy maelstrom. Unsworth's conception of a spiritual universe where deeper understanding may itself be the greatest curse is as nuanced and ingenious as his depiction of "poor little Fool," perhaps the most oddly endearing sleuth to come along in years. The scales are tipped a tad more toward gaudy savagery and gratuitous cruelty than toward more intellectual digressions and plot twists. Still, one suspects Thomas Fool will return, with more respect from readers than from his spiritual jailers. It's less a whodunit than a ripsnorter, with an emphasis on the ripping. Or maybe the snorting.

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May 1, 2016
Thomas Fool's career path has been, shall we say, unique. In The Devil's Detective (2015), Fool was an Information Man, one of only a handful in Hell, who did something he was not expected to do: he actually solved a crime. Now, in the sequel, he's Commander of the Information Office, in charge of Hell's numerous Information Men, many of whom are hopelessly incompetent (to be fair, many demons aren't terribly bright). There is one hope, though: Marianne, Thomas' new trainee, a woman freshly harvested from Limbo who might have the intelligence and drive to help Fool solve a series of suspicious fires and some especially brutal murders. Keep in mind, please, we are talking about fires and murders in Hell, where flames are not exactly unusual, so not only does Thomas have to solve the crimes, he also first has to work out whether these are crimes at all (and not, you know, merely the normal workings of Hell). Very clever and very sharply writtenan obvious crossover with appeal to both mystery and science-fiction readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)