Kansas author Scott Phillips’s first novel, The Ice Harvest, was a critical and commercial hit in 2000. A movie adaptation, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, was released in 2005. It’s also by some distance his most conventional crime novel, and since then Phillips has pursued his own idiosyncratic path. More recent novels have tended to be at most noir-adjacent and with unusual characters and settings.
In this regard, The Devil Raises his own is no different. The novel is set in Los Angeles in 1916 and leads in to the run up to America’s involvement in World War I and mostly involves people directly or peripherally involved with its nascent pornography industry. At different times in the book, the various characters move in and out of each other’s lives, sometimes only interacting for short periods, sometimes making a deeper connection.
Bill Ogden – the main character from Cottonwood, Phillips’ second novel – is a photographer, working from his own studio. His granddaughter, Flavia, having escaped an abusive marriage in the most dramatic way, is his assistant. Bill’s plan is for her to takeover, leaving him more time in his retirement to bed widows and document the city’s dive bars with his camera.
Henry and Ezra meet whilst riding the trains. Ezra, older, tells Henry he is returning to LA to see his family after leaving them to travel the country looking for work. In fact he’s a psychopathic criminal, violent and a little stupid, who kills without compunction, but out of necessity rather than for a thrill. Back in LA, he’ll make almost no attempt to seek out his family, but move from flop house to flop house, living on his wits and whatever he can steal. Henry, good-natured and a little naïve, has come to LA looking for work, and takes up a post as Bill and Flavia’s assisstant.
George has had some experience working for the movie studios, but now finds himself helming smut movies. He’d like to make better films, even if it’s only better blue movies, but is realistic about his prospects. Trudy, a star of his latest sapphic movie, has had to step in front of the camera to support her family after her husband walked out on his family three years ago. She’s desperate to get out of the business, but to her surprise, and her slight disgust, finds herself enjoying the attention of her co-star Victoria.
There are plenty more characters too. Wannabe starlets, failed comic actors, drunks, all manner of flotsam and jetsam are present.
How much you enjoy The Devil Raises His Own will to a large extent depend upon how prepared you are to put aside any expectations you might have about what a crime novel is supposed to be. There are crimes, and violence is frequent, often random, and with a comic edge. But there are no investigations and there is no police involvement. The closest thing to a person of authority is a sex-crazed postmaster who hopes to blackmail the filmmakers in to letting him meet there stars.
Any plot there might be is as flimsy as the ones in stag movies. This isn’t a criticism, I believe Scott Phillips is a fine writer, in fact I can’t think of anyone currently writing who is quite like him, but it’s something to be aware of before deciding to read him. He has a facility for comic dialogue and circumstances, and his novels have a whimsical nature tempered with a hard edge. There’s also a lot of sex in this book. A lot.
I found The Devil Raises His Own to be a refreshing change from a lot of the crime fiction currently written, which can often be somewhat formulaic. If you adjust your expectations, go in with an open mind, you just might find that you enjoy it too.
Also see our review of Scott Phillips’s The Adjustment.
Soho Press
Print/Kindle
£12.33
CFL Rating: 4 Stars