Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Devil's Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth

3 reviews

shalini_rasamdaa's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I love detective mysteries, I love fantasy and spec-fic, so when those two are combined I will 
absolutely feel some type of way so I was positively biased towards this book even before I started. 
The Devil’s Detective takes place entirely in Hell, and our hero Thomas Fool is an Information Man for Hell (roughly a sort of policeman). His job is to receive crime cases, and mark it as “Do Not Investigate, until The Case(™) arrives that leaves him questioning everything he knows. Of course it’s a murder case, and the setting has such a noir vibe that you’re unsurprised to learn that the victims are mainly sex workers.
David Rintool is a great narrator and brings Thomas Fool’s character to life (there are places where he gets overwrought and it feels unnatural but it’s all good) and Unsworth’s writing is grimly efficient and descriptive, clinically describing the horrifying (and really, really viscerally disgusting) realities of life in Hell. Can’t help feeling sorry for those people, even though if they’re in Hell, there’s a reason they’re there, I mean some of those people I felt sorry for might have tortured a dog to death, so there’s that conflict. 
I was hooked completely from the first line to the last, even though this story doesn’t use groundbreaking mystery devices (apart from the setting) and  it was obvious from the start who is pulling the puppet strings and who the villain is, but to have it all laid out was still an exciting ride. Fantastic worldbuilding - just when you think Hell couldn’t get worse, it does. And man, the tragedy of it all. Looking forward to what the Fool gets up to in the next story.

 
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raveisbored's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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pomegranatepanacea's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Definitely not a feel-good read, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. The action is tense and is one of my favorite aspects of the story. It is very violent and profane, and there are vivid descriptions of dead bodies. If that is upsetting to you, then I don't recommend it. 

The mystery is well-written as well, in my opinion. There is enough information that a reader could figure things out before Fool if they are paying attention, but not so much that Fool seems stupid. 

Something that irked me was the descriptions of masses of bodies; they usually (if not always) mention exclusively pale, white, pinkish skin tones. I don't recall any characters being non-white, and definitely not a named character. 

The story is miserable and many people die in it, but it is a misery that I enjoyed.
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