My 2022 Read Harder challenge includes reading more debut or emerging Australian authors, and I am off to a great start with Ruth McIver’s I Shot the Devil. Ruth won Australia’s Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2018 with this manuscript, and on reading the published book, you can see why.
This riveting crime novel is set in Long Island America and keeps you turning the page from start to finish. It is tense, unnerving at times, and full of the dark side of relationships and families.
In I Shot the Devil we meet Erin Sloane, a journalist who sometimes writes long-form crime pieces for Long Island outlet Inside Island, but mostly chooses to drink, pop pills and try not to think about anything too important, keeping her past at bay.
She has returned to her old home to care for a dying father, ex-cop R. P. Sloane, which is another stressor sending her to the whiskey bottle: like father like daughter. Her editor wants her to cover an old local case from the 1990s – the murder of teenager, Andre Villiers, by his friends in what was reported at the time as a drug-fueled satanic ritual. Trouble is, Erin knows that case all too well. The group of ‘Satanists’ were Erin’s friends, too, including her then abusive boyfriend, Danny, who was one of those sent down for Andre’s death. And of course, the leader Ricky Hell – intense, attractive and oozing bad boy appeal – was killed by a cop on the night.
This riveting crime novel is set in Long Island America and keeps you turning the page from start to finish. It is tense, unnerving at times, and full of the dark side of relationships and families.
- Jane Cowell
Now, Erin has to let the memory of those kids, the murder and every other god-awful thing that happened to her come back. What she finds is that her memories are nowhere close to reality. Erin courts danger at every turn and as she gets closer to the truth, danger ripples from every corner. Not one of the teenagers, or their siblings, from that fateful night led rosy lives and Erin knows that the survivors are lying. Her own past is fraught, and there is a danger for her in delving back into it.
This is a raw, challenging noir crime novel with a flawed, likeable lead character in Erin. The writing is stylistic, the story complex and the surprises real. If you love crime novels then this is a must-read for you. Also available in our Book Express collections at our Diamond Valley, Mill Park, Watsonia and Eltham branches. A copy is just waiting for you to grab on your next visit.
Author Ruth McIver was born in Dublin, completed her PhD in the field of true-crime inspired fiction with Curtin University, Western Australia and is currently based in Melbourne.