For anyone familiar with the Mountain Goats' music, it's no real surprise that their driving force's novels should tend to be set a few years in the past, generally looking back further still, and that they should turn on the details of a world which still feels recent to those of us who lived through it, even as the numbers show it's slipping increasingly far into the past. Hell, this is the second time a video shop has loomed large in one of them (and the exception was about play-by-mail gaming). The protagonist this time is a true crime writer, one of whose books was adapted into a film (even there, note that it was a film, not a podcast or a Netflix series) but whose follow-ups have failed to catch in the same way. Now he's in a small Californian town which matches him nicely; it has one shocking incident in its past which is widely known, but the eponymous house, into which he moves, was the scene of its difficult follow-up killing. Darnielle is very good on the ickiness of the whole true crime genre; at a convention, a peer tells the narrator "There aren't any villains in a true crime book. There's the hero, and there's his victims." At the same time, he uses it as an exemplar of the general human tendency to understand the world in stories, and find significance in the most minor or incidental details as soon as they're presented in a context where meaning seems expected of them: "Victims spend their entire time in the spotlight just waiting for the fatal blow, on a conveyor belt that leads to the guillotine." While poking awkwardly at all that, though, he himself catches the little things which, while relevant to the story, don't need to be, the moods and moments recognisable from other lives: "There are only three weeks left in the school year; there's no single word in the English language precise enough to describe the atmosphere on campus when it gets close to summer break. There's electricity in the air, but it's tampered by languor, the promise of lazy days ahead, of long warm mornings with no to-do lists attached; there's excitement, but it's checked by an impending sense of loss among the seniors; there's hope, but there's also suspicion." Or, of the narrator's gently drifting life before the story begins, the painfully accurate summary "My wheels made an agreeable noise when they spun."

There are enough threads here that you could present any of them as the key theme; the unfairness of a society where a woman killing in self defence gets executed and then also becomes a folk demon; the sense of the "unexplored terrain lurking in known shapes", the way the most unprepossessing places can become castles or ancient temples to those who fully inhabit them; even the the idea of manifest destiny crumbling in the daylight and, most shocking to the British reader, California running out of room. But surely at least part of the point of the exercise is precisely to say that all of these things apply, and none of them; this is not a grand scheme, it's the big old tangle that is life. The impossibility of ever telling a story in a way that the people who lived it really recognise becomes more of a preoccupation as the book progresses, the painful knowledge that you could spend your whole life trying to write one book and still not get everything relevant in. Fans may find echoes of the songs: there's one kid who seemed a lot like, in a similar shitty situation to begin with, he didn't make it through this year, and it did kill him – with maybe a nugget of Autoclave at the heart, and a reminder why it's so important that No Children is called No Children. Not everything worked for me – I get what the sections of pastiche mediaeval chronicle are trying to do, but I'm not convinced they pull it off, and I might feel the same way about the resolution, though my sentiments there are a lot more mixed. But fuck me, Darnielle can catch and convey a mood, without music just as well as with. And if nothing else, I've now learned there's an official forensic definition of overkill, at 17 stab wounds. Which may or may not be true, but I'm sure as blazes not Googling to confirm.

(Netgalley ARC)

Devil House is an ambitious, sprawling true-crime novel that also functions as a take-down and subversion of the entire genre: Gage, Darnielle's protagonist, makes his living by inhabiting the shells of murder scenes ans spinning narratives, but in his latest obsession - the vaguely Satanic-scented Devil House, a derelict former adult bookstore - he starts to question his own relationship to victims and victimhood. This makes for compulsive reading, with multiple narrative threads and points of view (including some not altogether successful incursions into Medieval English) coming together to an ultimately perfectly unsatisfying conclusion. Very smart stuff, and I enjoyed it immensely.

A true crime author gets lost within his own narrative

Mountain Goats singer, writer, and guitarist is now four books deep into a wildly creative literary career which began back in 2008 with a trippy look at the Black Sabbath album Master of Reality, seen from the point of view of a character in a mental hospital. This was an early indication that Darnielle was not going to follow standard literary conventions, with his subsequent releases Wolf in White Van (2013) and Universal Harvester (2017) being even more wildly off-beat than his debut. I (sort of) loved both books, which also had me scratching my head, with the former concerning a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail and the latter a 1990s video shop (remember those?) discovers weird and disturbing home recordings secretly taped over their cassettes.

Darnielle returns with Devil House and, surprise surprise, true to form, his latest release is anything but a conventional work of fiction. To be frank, if it was, I would probably have been disappointed and ultimately I expect the unexpected with this refreshingly original author. Like all his previous work there is much to enjoy, balanced with a fair amount of head scratching, not everything gels 100% together, but it was still a highly ambitious and original read. John Darnielle does not write traditional horror, what he produces is an intoxicating blend of literary fiction which dances around the genres and is notoriously tricky to classify.

Devil House is his take on the world of true crime literature. Some years earlier main character Gage Chandler wrote a very successful true crime book based upon teacher Diana Crane who was convicted for murdering two students who forced their way into her home. This was a notorious incident which was later turned into a film ‘The White Witch of Morro Bay’, interestingly, Devil House also includes numerous flashbacks to the double murder as Chandler receives letters from somebody close to the case which forces it back into his consciousness, even though this book is several years in his rear mirror. I enjoyed the way the two past and present cases were vaguely blended together and the thought processes it gives to someone working and writing up a true crime case, presented in a very down to earth and non-sensationalist manner, for example, buying packages of old newspaper clippings from Ebay during the research.

Although the main case was non-supernatural it reminded me of the hit film Sinister. A true crime writer buys the house which was previously the scene of a gruesome murder and plans to research and write about it. Sound familiar? You bet it does. Gage is looking for his next big hit and buys a house which was the scene of an unsolved double murder fifteen years earlier. What was fascinating about this was that the murders did not make headline news, even though it took place in the 1980s Satanic Panic era and looked ritualistic in nature. The setting of the killings was an adult book and video shop which was hugely unpopular with the local residents. Much of Devil House is built around Gage Chandler’s findings of the protagonists who were around at the time and were the potential murderers or accomplice. This aspect the book failed to deliver as these characters were pretty bland and one-dimensional, but you could also argue that this was partly due to the shortcomings of his research and lack of embellishment.

I thoroughly enjoyed another curveball Darnielle threw at the reader; the setting was the small Californian town of Milpitas, if you are a true crime buff then that might ring your bell as it was the setting of the 1986 hit film starring Keanu Reeves Rivers Edge which was based on the notorious 1981 murder of Marcy Renee Conrad, where many teens know of the murder but fail to initially report it. This story bubbles away in the background and had me reaching for Wikipedia to familiarise myself with the true facts of the original incident. Gage Chandler is aware of this and hopes his latest investigation will have the same national impact. However, the story we read fails to bring the sleepy town of Milpitas to life and although he lives there for some time I would like to have seen more of him integrating with the locals, something he fails to do except for a couple of brief occasions. Ultimately, there seemed little point in actually living in the murder house as it added little to the story.

Like all of Darnielle’s fiction for many this will be a love it or hate it type of book which tries very hard to come across as authentically true crime, however, bizarrely also throws in jarring old-English ‘Descended from Kings’ passages connected to Arthurian England. I found these passages to be unnecessary and pretentious and the story would have been much tighter if they had been abandoned in favour of something which joined the dots of the main story more naturally.

Devil House is a puzzle and some of the meandering narratives do not make perfect sense, but they are not meant to, as Gage Chandler also finds himself lost in his own true crime narrative. It asks lots of interesting questions, such as what should an author do if he cannot solve the puzzle? What if there is not a big answer which zips everything together into a nice package? Do you make it sexier by making stuff up? If this is the case, what personal ethics and morals come with covering such crimes via book form or film? John Darnielle delves into these questions with style, grace and wisdom, and such is his style refuses to answer his own questions!

DNF at 56%

I saw the other reviews and tried my best to keep at it but this is where I end my journey with this book.

This is a complex tale of of a true crime writer who after writing a few books, comes upon the less known story of "The Devil House', which I'm sorry to say isn't as spine-tingling as it sounds.

Rather, this book is about the narrator trying todo justice to the story of what really happened at Devil House by writing the truth in as much as truth can be written about something that happened a long time ago. It's meta, it's a great idea but unfortunately I didn't resonate with the story at all.

There were times where I was lost because there is no set format to the book. It tells multiple stories, including one about "The White Witch", which is about the narrator's first book. This is actually an interesting story.

But the main story about Devil House is long and boring. I'm sure there are others who will find it interesting and will love it but it just wasn't me.

To me, the entire book was lost in clunky writing and shifting formats.

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribe UK for the e-arc.

Devil House is the story writer, Gage Chandler and his journey to produce a bestselling book. For inspiration, his agent suggests he buy an old house in a Californian town where a brutal and 'satanic' double murder took place in the 80's. In a quest to recreate the success of his previous true crime book we learn about 'the white witch', bestseller turned movie about a school teacher and the murder of her two students. Along the way we discover not everything we read should be believed and the stereotypes and tropes of the genre are perfectly written.

I admit I was drawn to this book by the cover and while it was nothing like I expected, I really enjoyed this take on the true crime phenomena. The writing style allowed me to read this in two days, and whilst I was a bit confused by the white witch storyline taking up a large part of the book, the more we learn about Gage and his reason for writing true crime, everything falls into place. Overall I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading more from the author.

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribe for the opportunity to read Devil House.

This is one hell of a book, written like a true crime but with elements of other stories it fuses myth and how society makes more of some murders then they actually are and how legends and horror stories grow over time. It also highlights society looking down on people without homes or even families which can lead to damaging and tragic consequences. This is one book to make you think.

Devil House is a novel about a true crime writer who finds himself tangled up in a web of what story he is telling. Gage Chandler had a hit debut true crime book, and subsequent movie adaptation, to make his name, and then more books that were less successful. His latest opportunity is to move into the 'Devil House', the location of murders in the 1980s that seemed to be part of the Satanic Panic, and use his techniques for uncovering the story to write his next book. However, as he writes and explores what happened, true crime starts to get less clear for him as a goal.

I've not read anything by Darnielle before (and heard about one Mountain Goats song, though I've heard of them a lot) so I didn't know what to expect going in, other than the lurid cover that is perhaps a bit of misdirection (though it is very Satanic Panic). The novel is broken into different sections, moving between Chandler's narrative of researching and writing, the story of the Devil House, and some other parts woven in too. Until quite near the end, it's not quite clear what is going to happen, and the ending wasn't what I expected, but I enjoyed how it played out for the most part (I didn't quite get the Arthurian digression, though I do like Arthurian stuff and on reflection I can kinda see the point).

As a novel, it is mostly a commentary on true crime, writing, and obsession, and I thought the stuff about true crime was very interesting, though as someone who doesn't read or watch the genre, I don't know much about levels of fictionality and fact in it. Ideas of what is a 'good' narrative and how you turn the messy truth into something gripping are very intriguing, and the book does play with that by luring you into thinking you have a nice narrative, though the actual ending of the whole book is perhaps a little underwhelming because of it all. I liked the experiment of this novel in terms of the layers of narrative and the different stories you are told, though, as with true crime, you almost wish all the stories could be wrapped up a little more neatly.

John Darnielle is an author who is completely new to me so I didn’t quite know what to expect from “Devil House”; I am happy to say that, as a fan of unconventional literature, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This is a nonconformist, clever novel about the morals of true-crime books and the 1980s “Satanic panic”. The main character, Gage, is an author who plans to live on the site of an unsolved double murder that took place on Halloween 1986 in an abandoned porn shop, and to write about the experience. He has form in writing this kind of thing - his first book, about a teacher who killed two students in self-defense, became a modestly successful film. But that past begins to gnaw at him as he grows more aware of how the genre demands archetypes that cheapen human loss. Thus the book evolves into a kind of critique of the true-crime genre. There are some odd passages which are written in a kind of made-up Middle English which are part of a subplot involving Arthurian legends; this is not your average horror novel, but there is enough to satisfy the average gore-fan.
Darnielle is excellent at digging into the uncomfortable details of abusive homes and how fear can spark an urge to escape both physically and creatively. “Devil House” is an impressive, metafictional work that delivers the pleasures of true-crime while at the same time subverting it.

Don’t be fooled by the retro, schlock-horror cover, Darnielle’s not travelling into Amityville Horror territory. Although if anyone does fall for the ruse, the Ivy Compton-Burnett epigraph should be a tip-off that Darnielle’s heading somewhere else entirely. His central character’s a true-crime writer Gage Chandler. Chandler’s version of events that fuelled an urban legend in his hometown, has done so well, it was turned into a movie. Now he’s ready for his next project. Its focus’s an unsolved, double murder dating back to 1986 that took place in a sleepy, Californian town: two bodies found carved up, in a building decorated to look like a nightmarish, Satan’s workshop. Gage buys the house where the murders took place, moves in and begins to reconstruct events. But Darnielle’s novel’s less a novel, than a series of arguments questioning the foundations of the true crime genre: how it’s written; how it’s interpreted; the ethics and impact of drawing on actual people; the notion of reaching “the truth” of something without bias, embellishment or harm. Through a series of embedded, overlapping, sometimes contradictory narratives, Darnielle throws up a number of concerns about whose story he’s telling and why, and the nature of knowledge itself.

Darnielle shifts from Gage to Gage’s earlier book featuring Diana Crane, the white witch, but the extract provided immediately casts doubt on Gage’s claims about method and objectivity. Then Darnielle inserts passages from Gage’s work-in-progress, Devil House, set in the town of Milpitas. In 1981, Milpitas was the setting of the real-life rape and murder of Marcy Renee Conrad, an infamous crime that spawned a Hollywood retelling River’s Edge: all of which Darnielle expertly weaves into Gage’s discussion of his process. The white witch and devil’s house crimes are convincingly conveyed, both cleverly tied to the "Satanic Panic" of the time – elements reminded me of Berlinger and Sinofsky’s documentation of the West Memphis Three case in Paradise Lost. But at the same time, I found it difficult to fully engage with these stories within stories, Darnielle’s emphasis on the artificiality of storytelling made their constructedness almost too obvious and intrusive.

It’s an ambitious piece and Darnielle’s evidently skilled, I’m just not sure he quite pulls everything off. I thought he was effective at highlighting the ways in which true crime narratives trade in stereotypes – “the good student”, “the disaffected youth” – and clichés, that order and classify according to a society’s priorities and an era’s mythologies. And I was intrigued by Darnielle's addition of more and more layers within layers, some startling, some less so, taking us further into the murky ethical practices of true crime. But, from my perspective, he makes a lot of his key points too early on. Darnielle’s variety of styles’s mostly persuasive, and the result’s inventive and highly readable, but it sometimes felt a little too much like an academic exercise for my taste.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Scribe UK