The Devil Takes You Home
A Novel
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3.7 • 85 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This genre-defying, Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker award-winning thriller follows a father desperate to salvage what's left of his family—even if it means a descent into violence.
Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.
The Devil Takes You Home is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby’s southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Oprah Daily, CrimeReads, The Millions, and many more!
An Edgar Award Finalist • A Bram Stoker Award Winner • A Shirley Jackson Award Winner • A Book of the Month Club Pick • An August Indie Next List Selection • An ABA Indie Bestseller
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Gabino Iglesias’s crime thriller is a dark, poetic tale of the American dream turning into a nightmare. When Mario’s daughter is diagnosed with leukemia and he’s laid off from his office job, he reluctantly agrees to take a job as a hit man—and discovers to his horror that he’s a natural. Traveling across the Texas-Mexico borderlands on the trail of a drug cartel, Mario thinks and speaks in both Spanish and English, straddling the two cultures and struggling with this duality. Iglesias paints Mario as a relatable everyman who’s just happened to find a disturbing but potentially lucrative outlet for his terror and frustration. A dark and intensely emotional read, The Devil Takes You Home is a character-driven novel that touches on everything from fatherhood to capitalism to grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After Mario, the narrator of this bewitching paranormal thriller from Iglesias (Coyote Songs), racks up huge debts to pay for his four-year-old daughter's leukemia treatments, he becomes a hit man for Brian, his meth-addicted friend in Austin, Tex. Mario agrees to help Brian rob a Mexican cartel, a job that will yield them $200,000 each. The pair rendezvous with Juanca, who takes them to Mexico through a secret tunnel after a horrifying pit stop for a gruesomely obtained safety talisman. The stakes rise as supernatural beings threaten Mario and shake his confidence. Meanwhile, Juanca convinces Mario that Brian means to kill him for his share. Bizarre happenings increase as the two men prepare for a showdown with members of the cartel. Iglesias effectively portrays Mario's fragile mental state and builds a subtle but complex mythology out of chilling details. Readers should be prepared for some intense violence, as well as passages of untranslated Spanish ("Melisa y yo morimos en vida, and that's the worst kind of death"). Fans of creepy but emotionally deep action novels will be satisfied.
Customer Reviews
Unlike
anything I’ve read before. will change the way you look at more than a few things.
Cool topic. Bad execution.
Feels like characters are poorly developed and just generally more stereotypes then anything else. Lots of political commentary that felt forced through cringy exchanges. Better ways to explore those complex ideas then what happened in this book. The supernatural elements are the best parts of this book because the author is great at description and built those moments out well. Overall a meh read with cringy hard to convince yourself to finish the book moments, sprinkled with cool supernatural scenes, only to have to slouch your way to the end.
Gripping
Truly gripping journey into a world existing right next to my own, forged from loss, pain and guilt. Couldn’t put it down.