I Read Books: The Devil's Detective

 

The Devil’s Detective

Thomas Fool is an Information Man in hell. Most of the cases that come to him have red ribbons, are not urgent and, because there are not enough information men, and this is hell, they are returned uninvestigated. Now one comes with blue ribbons, someone was killed and there was a blue flash. The soul was stolen.

The usual deaths, the ones reported with red ribbons, they return the soul to the sea of limbo, perhaps to be fished out into hell again. Hell used to be fire and torture, now it is factories and fields and lost souls who are prostituted to demons in bars and slums.

The investigation is complicated by the arrival of angels from heaven, Adam, Balthazar, and unnamed and silent scribe and archive. Here to negotiate the only usual exit from hell, how many souls might be taken to heaven. Also complicating is the Man Of Plants And Flowers, who may or may not be outside the control of the authorities, who may or may not be able to spy through plants growing almost everywhere.

The murder mystery exists mostly to give a reason for Fool to take us on a tour of hell. To see various bizarre and odd places and professions, many grotesque and terrible crimes. And to also have Fool see the changes in hell, how he becomes enmeshed in the obscure politics and central to the nature of the change. Yet this is always hell, and there will be no happy ending, a crime might be resolved but never solved.

Read This: Trip through hell to uncover a crime worse, somehow, than the usual
Don’t Read This: Hell is a thoroughly unpleasant place to investigate