Friend of the Devil
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
High school can be hell. Literally.
A demonic detective novel best devoured in a single sitting--from acclaimed TV writer Stephen Lloyd.
Welcome to Danforth Putnam, boarding school for the elite, sprawled across its own private island off the coast of New England. Sam, a war vet who feels sure he’s seen it all, has been called here to find a stolen rare book. But as he corners D&D nerds, grills steroid-raging linemen, and interviews filthy-rich actresses, he soon senses that something far stranger—“witchy”, in fact—is afoot. When students start to meet mysterious and gruesome deaths, Sam realizes just how fast the clock is ticking.
After joining forces with plucky, epilepsy-defying school reporter Harriet, Sam ventures into increasingly dark territory, unravelling a supernatural mystery that will upend everything he thinks he knows about this school—and then shatter his own reality.
Toss Dracula into a blender, throw in a shot of hard-boiled detective fiction, splash in a couple drops of Stranger Things, and pour yourself a nice tall glass of Friend of the Devil.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
TV producer and writer Lloyd's middling debut, a gory horror thriller set in the 1980s, starts strongly, but underdeveloped characters and a familiar plotline undercut the momentum. Hard-boiled insurance investigator Sam Gregory, a Korean War vet, is dispatched by his employer to Danforth Putnam, an upscale prep school located on its own island off the Massachusetts coast. A valuable 11th-century manuscript was stolen from a supposedly uncrackable library safe, a crime the police don't take seriously. Sam interviews students and staff members to get some leads, an inquiry that coincides with a rampage on the island by a possibly demonic something that cuts a bloody swath through the island's residents. The slaughter gives the gumshoe another, and more pressing, mystery to solve at his own peril. The unremarkable depiction of a creepy boarding school harboring dark secrets from its past matches a climax unlikely to impress or surprise those who have read this kind of book before. Seekers of genuine scares will have to look elsewhere.
