Review: The Devils You Know
Reviewed by: Greg Fleming
Author:
Ben Sanders
Publisher:
Allen & Unwin
ISBN:
9781760877873
Date Published:
01 February 2021
Pages:
336
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$32.99
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One of our finest crime writers is back with a riveting, action-packed thriller set in California. Like all of Sanders’ US based books, it’s populated by tough guys who aren’t as tough as they think they are when up against the latest of Sanders’ taciturn but deep-down-decent protagonists, former military man and ex-covert agent Vincent.
Vincent (no last name and Sanders’ plays at one point with the Pulp Fiction parallels) follows in the wake of Marshall Grade from American Blood, its sequel Marshall’s Law and good-cop-turned-rogue Miles Keller from 2018’s The Stakes. Like those characters Vincent is another damaged, battle weary loner with a fierce protective streak - something we learn early on in a nine-page flashback.
Vincent is quietly working construction in New York, happy to be a hired hand with regular hours after a turbulent past in covert operations. His co-workers nickname him The Librarian as Vincent’s more interested in reading than joking around in his break time. Indeed, he walks around with copies of Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost and Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow in his coat, one of which mitigates the impact of a fierce jab from a heavy after Vincent tries to protect a work-mate whose gambling debts come home to roost.
The pay-off for his actions? The guy he was trying to protect tells the bad guys his address in order to wipe the debt clean and they bomb his apartment necessitating Vincent’s departure to sunnier climes.
It’s a compelling episode; one full of richly textured characters other writers might base an entire novel around. Sanders simply lets the episode aid the exposition and moves on.
Still in his early thirties Sanders has a growing fan base worldwide for his smart, wry crime novels. He’s also blessed with a prose style that’s lean, specific and visually based. That, combined with a deep understanding of criminal motivation and a determinedly noir world view, makes him one of the most interesting hard-boiled writers operating at the moment. Sanders’ heroes might get out of their dire situations through quick thinking, muscle and gunplay but their souls will pay the cost.
In his fourth book he’s chiseled the prose down to a brutal, mesmerising rhythm - quick cuts that get to the heart of the scene; each blow or gun shot in high definition: “Bullets rattled on the metalwork, a brutal stitch lengthwise, and the windshield and the glass in the passenger door collapsed in a single panoramic curtain.”
“My process is visual,” Sanders told me when we talked in 2018. “Once I can see my setting, I can see my characters moving through it, and I have my story.”
The story (drugs gone missing, millions of dollars at stake which leads to a mansion shootout) takes place under Santa Barbara’s halcyon blue skies (Sanders no doubt paying homage to Santa Barbara’s most famous crime writer Ross Macdonald). Vincent, who vows not to use a gun when we meet him, soon has to recant his pledge as what looked like a cushy bodyguard job (time to finish the screenplay he’s been working on and catch some waves) turns out to be anything but.
After the mogul’s daughter Erin, a divorced, neo conservative journalist and speaker, demands answers around her father’s shady dealings and the wreckage they create, Vincent is forced to rely once again on his well-honed skills.
In between the dazzling action there’s some interesting political back and forth between Vincent and Erin over the legitimacy or otherwise of American intervention in foreign lands; disagreements that only seem to fuel a budding attraction (Erin might be the most fully realised female character Sanders has created).
But most of all The Devils You Know is great fun, full of memorable characters, sly pop culture references and action so real you can hear the bullets whiz by - and there are hints here that Vincent will be back in a future book. Let’s hope so. Fans of Don Winslow, Robert Crais and Elmore Leonard take note - there’s a new guy on the block.
Reviewed by Greg Fleming
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