Since the death of her husband Tom, Jeanie has been on a two-year spiral: now she’s homeless, addicted, and ready to die herself. That’s when Olita Cummins appears, plucking her off the streets and giving her food, clothes, and lots of money. There’s a catch, though. Olita isn’t just a rich businesswoman; she’s a powerful demon angling to take down a competitor, and she thinks Jeanie will be just the right tool for the job.
Andria Carver’s THE DEMON’S DECEIT is solid and straightforward. Yes, it has a supernatural component; but, at its heart, it’s a black comedy crime thriller with a twist of horniness, and it absolutely delivers on all counts. Jeanie’s snark gives the narrative voice some momentum, and supports some suitably ludicrous situational humor. Among the standouts is a double-cross rescue operation in which Jeanie and her partner are armed only with an ex-boyfriend’s absurd ninja paraphernalia. Though several characters are demons, they effectively act like mob bosses, and readers of crime fiction will feel right at home with networks of informants, run-ins with enforcers, and turf wars that quickly turn bloody. The romantic subplot is fairly slim, but it’s satisfying enough. Jeanie is a widow, and she’s spending lots of time in dangerous situations with a hot friend. Though the psychological and emotional mechanics of their romance aren’t complicated, the text makes Jeanie sympathetic enough that the reader is rooting for her nonetheless.
THE DEMON’S DECEIT could use a final round of cleanup. Though the prose is mostly solid, the odd sentence slips through with awkwardly enjambed or convoluted phrases such as “The scene that greeted me when I next opened my eyes was high on the list of least expected.” The worldbuilding is intriguing, but it does sometimes gum up the storytelling. As a new member of this clandestine world, Jeanie understandably invites a lot of bald-faced exposition, and, as necessary as this may be, it can be laughable at times. The neat, progressive evolutionary ranks of supernatural beings, and the conceit of how they “ascend” to the next rank, feels very video game-y when laid out in plain language.
However, THE DEMON’S DECEIT is still bouncy, wry, and overwhelmingly entertaining, and qualms about storytelling technique never get in the way of its brightness and momentum.
Snappy, feisty, and fun, Andria Carver’s THE DEMON’S DECEIT delivers action and laughs from start to finish.
~ Dan Accardi for IndieReader