re:mote voices

Title:The Devil You Know
Author: Mike Carey
Publisher: Orbit Books

Felix Castor was an exorcist. But when one of his friends became possessed by a demon he did more damage than good, and determined that enough was enough. However having been badgered into doing magic tricks at kid's parties to make some cash he is just in the right place when he gets a phone call about a haunting in a labyrinthine archives just off Euston Station. Even if a series of warnings suggest that taking this job will be the death of him. A woman in white, with her face hidden by a red haze haunts the archive, previously quiet she has suddenly become violent. What should be a simple banishing doesn't turn out that way - Felix had assumed this was an old ghost, rather it seems that this was a young woman who was murdered quite recently.

The Devil You Know is the first novel by Mike Carey, and perhaps its biggest problem is that it isn't his last. I don't mean that in as nasty away as it sounds, what I mean is that from start to finish The Devil You Know feels like a set up for a series of Felix Castor novels. The fact that the front cover says "The Devil You Know: A Felix Castor Novel", while the back shows the cover for the next novel "Vicious Circle", the idea of Castor as a serial is something we are conscious of before we even open the book. Once you have cracked the cover, you get the sense that everything is set up, which of course is the case with most books, but you shouldn't be so conscious of it. Carey builds a cast around Castor so that you can spot the recurring characters by the back story that is crammed in there with them, story that is of no real use to this novel, but justifies the characters ongoing presence. One problem with this is that it isn't even done particularly smoothly - early on we learn that Castor had a sister, there are several references to her, and then suddenly his brother crops up out of nowhere.

The core plot of the ghost in the archive and the associated murder works okay as something to hang a novel around. This means the novel straddles the line between supernatural and crime novel. Of course one problem with crime novels is if the author gives away a vital clue to the readers, but the character fails to pick up on it at all, especially when the character is the narrator and for that information to pass to the reader the character has to observe it. When that happens here the character practically says this is where the girl was murdered, only to take another couple hundred pages for that fact to come to the surface of his mind.

Which of course highlights another problem, as a debut novel The Devil You Know is too long. Just short of 500 pages it starts to feel like something of a slog. Carey's novel is comparable to the likes of Laurel K. Hamilton, who he shares a publisher with, and who is certainly writing in the same ballpark. But at least her first few novels were short, quick, dirty and fun; before she began to tediously overwrite her later work. The Devil You Know wants to be short, sharp and lots of fun, it isn't.

While this is Carey's first novel, he has in fact been writing comics for years. Which opens the question of whether writers moving from one medium to another works or not. There have been a number of novelists in recent times that have moved into comics. Greg Rucka comes to mind as one of the most successful. Richard Morgan who provides the cover blurb being another. Even Denise Mina who took over Hellblazer from Carey. To name a few. Though I can't say I can think of many comic writers who have turned novelists - Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore being the only two published that come to mind. The two are clearly different art forms when it comes to writing, and I suspect that as a comic series Felix Castor would have been more successful. Though even then if we consider this as a first issue of an ongoing series its still a heavy opening shot when what you need is a hook.