“‘What happens to the story what happens to the teller what happens to the people?’ Darnielle renders this dilemma-and the bad-taste curiosity that compels people to read and write true crime despite reservations-with such depth and clarity that it feels like he’s somehow culpable too. this is a story about what can’t be told because the nature of telling selects some truths while setting others aside.”- Slate “Devil House can be read as an indictment of the true crime genre, specifically of the way stories are concocted to explain often-unfathomable tragedies, and of how some stories take precedence over others regardless of their truth.

“Devil House has all the gross-out hallmarks of horror and true crime while also questioning the moral implications of the genres.” - Los Angeles Times 'Suspenseful, brilliant and chaotically addicting, Devil House triumphs as a page-turning metafictional treatise on the power of narratives cloaked in the trappings of a certifiable true crime classic.' -Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle It’s better.” -Dwight Garner, The New York Times I had no idea where it was going, in the best possible sense.It’s never quite the book you think it is. “ Devil House is terrific: confident, creepy, a powerful and soulful page-turner. He begins his research into the murders with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected-back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.ĭevil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell-his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success-and a movie adaptation-to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts.

That’s what his mother always told him when he was a child.

From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.

Devil house john darnielle review