Scan barcode
A review by tbr_the_unconquered
The Devil's Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth
4.0
The whole concept of afterlife is one that has enabled most of the major religions of the world to hold people in their thrall. The dichotomy of sin and virtue has proven to be a much more effective manipulative mechanism than war, torture or bribery. Repeatedly tell a large group of people that you will be boiled, tortured and roasted in the netherworld and they start dreaming up a place so horrid that they keep a wide berth from everything that is named as sin in their belief systems. This begs the question, is Hell a static place ? Will the so called nefarious denizens be torturing away souls for all of eternity ? Humanity has worked hard at converting sins to art forms over the centuries and it would only be natural that Hell would keep up with it. Simon Kurt Unsworth thinks so too in his story for he creates a version of Hell which robs a human soul of its last desperate thread : hope.
This is a murder mystery set in Hell ! Now how ironic is that ? In a place which is supposedly ruled by chaos, what difference would one murder make ? It seems that even in the most hopeless of places, there exists a semblance of order and discipline. This is how we get introduced to Thomas Fool who is one of three information men in Hell who are charged with investigating and reporting crimes. Fool has a thankless job for no one really cares whether these are solved or not. Egged on by his superior – the enigmatic elderflower he goes around trying to do the best he can which at most times is next to nothing. Hell is a horrendous place and let me explain why. If you are unlucky, you will forever be one tiny drop in a vast ocean of damned souls which lie beyond the most extreme walls of Hell. Your soul is in limbo and it just floats about without any notion as to why it is there in the first place. A few souls from this sea might get picked and finally given a shape and form and yet much more horrid fates await them in Hell. Such a human being might either be a nameless worker in the giant factories or a sex toy for the perverse demons of the land. In either case, the human being has no knowledge of what it did to have ended up here. This existence lasts for ever and ever with no change in sight but only for one single difference. Once in while across eons come a delegation from Heaven which brings with it a final chance of redemption. A random group of souls might be picked for elevation which stirs up resentment among the others. Amidst all this noise is when a murderer strikes among the human populace gruesomely and it is up to the overworked Thomas Fool to solve these.
As a whodunit the story is pretty average. If you had read a fair share of mysteries, it is quite obvious to you who the murderer is. But the skill of the author is such that he subtly shifts focus to the environment in Hell and how it changes over the course of the story. Thomas Fool is so full of self-loathing that he comes across more as a reluctant observer than a hero. If Fool could talk to you, he might also have told you that he doesn’t want to be a hero ever. Barring a bit of predictability in the climax, this is a fantastic setting for an average story.
Recommended.
This is a murder mystery set in Hell ! Now how ironic is that ? In a place which is supposedly ruled by chaos, what difference would one murder make ? It seems that even in the most hopeless of places, there exists a semblance of order and discipline. This is how we get introduced to Thomas Fool who is one of three information men in Hell who are charged with investigating and reporting crimes. Fool has a thankless job for no one really cares whether these are solved or not. Egged on by his superior – the enigmatic elderflower he goes around trying to do the best he can which at most times is next to nothing. Hell is a horrendous place and let me explain why. If you are unlucky, you will forever be one tiny drop in a vast ocean of damned souls which lie beyond the most extreme walls of Hell. Your soul is in limbo and it just floats about without any notion as to why it is there in the first place. A few souls from this sea might get picked and finally given a shape and form and yet much more horrid fates await them in Hell. Such a human being might either be a nameless worker in the giant factories or a sex toy for the perverse demons of the land. In either case, the human being has no knowledge of what it did to have ended up here. This existence lasts for ever and ever with no change in sight but only for one single difference. Once in while across eons come a delegation from Heaven which brings with it a final chance of redemption. A random group of souls might be picked for elevation which stirs up resentment among the others. Amidst all this noise is when a murderer strikes among the human populace gruesomely and it is up to the overworked Thomas Fool to solve these.
As a whodunit the story is pretty average. If you had read a fair share of mysteries, it is quite obvious to you who the murderer is. But the skill of the author is such that he subtly shifts focus to the environment in Hell and how it changes over the course of the story. Thomas Fool is so full of self-loathing that he comes across more as a reluctant observer than a hero. If Fool could talk to you, he might also have told you that he doesn’t want to be a hero ever. Barring a bit of predictability in the climax, this is a fantastic setting for an average story.
Recommended.