The White Devil: A Novel [Kindle Edition]

I did enjoy this novel by Justin Evans but must start off by saying I in no way found it a gothic thriller as it is being described. Thriller leads the reader to think of it being scary and a page turner with much suspense. This is not what this book is about. Not to knock it at all. The gothic genre is achieved with high colors. Evans is a very good intelligent author and he sets the backdrop of England and the brooding boarding school Harrow School so well it leaps from the pages and comes to life. He is comfortable with the gothic genre and setting from page one till the end. The story is about American student Andrew Taylor who is sent to the school as a last resort by his father. He was kicked out of many schools in America for his behaviour and Harrow School is his last chance. The novel grabbed me from the beginning with the intense atmosphere, well defined characters and quick fast paced plot. The story moved quickly and right off the bat there is a murder. An added aspect to the plot is Andrew getting involved in a play about poet Byron who was a student at the school. He bears a strong resemblance to him physically and this is an important part of the story. Other main characters are Piers Hawkes, the house master who is also a past his time poet and drunk plus Persephone, the only female student at the school. Piers is the author of the play about Byron and Persephone the female lead.

But from here on the pace of the novel slows down as the ghost story unfolds. The first appearances of the ghost rang very true and I was at the edge of my seat. It was creepy and spellbinding. Andrew is the recipient of these visions and I expected a novel with ever increasing suspense and dread as the ghost made its presence stronger. In other words a great gothic thriller. But instead the book becomes a mystery into why the ghost is presenting itself, who the ghost is and what does it ultimately want. The search is on with our main characters to solve this but suspense and anticipation for the reader is gone. Andrew's thought process dealing with this throughout the book does make sense and works well for well. Persephone also rings true. But headmaster Piers just gets away with many actions at the school while still holding his job that I find unbelievable. There are a few other main characters that pop up but most characters become sidelines. The novel does move along smoothly but a thriller it is not. It's a good read but not one that keeps you up hours. It took me time to get through this one.

Justin Evans is a very intelligent author and the gothic atmosphere is superb. The basis of the story is also very intriguing but as it unfolds it does not have much suspense or apprehension for the reader. The ending is satisfying but for me it was a big opportunity lost as the ghost and the sequences involving it became plot points and not suspenseful arcs of the story. The mystery aspect does work well though and answers are explained well as the novel wraps itrself up. I can recommend this novel but not as a gothic thriller. If a thriller is what you expect you will be let down. But for an atmospheric gothic mystery with well drawn charaters this book works well.

For as long as I can remember I've been a sucker for gothic thrillers, especially those set at British boarding schools. There's so much potential there - the ancient school buildings, the fog-shrouded landscapes, the sense of history frozen in time, the wafting hint of repression and unnatural obsessions. Alas, despite all that potential, no example of the genre has ever lived up to my melodramatic expectations. Either they're so poorly written that it's an effort not to gag at the overworked metaphors and lame cliches, or else they devolve into a climax so anticlimactic and silly that I find myself thinking: "Really? I've read all this way, and that's all you've got?"

And then, finally, a book that delivers the goods! White Devil is a literate, well paced, dense ghost story with characters that engage, writing that absorbs, red herrings so intriguing you'll enjoy being led astray, and a plot that keeps tightening the tension until the final sentences of the story's wholly original, wholly satisfying, wholly creepy denouement.

The story revolves around Andrew Taylor, a 17yr old American boy exiled by his outraged parents to an exclusive English boarding School after scandal and a death force him to flee his school in Connecticut. But the ghosts he's left behind are nothing compared to the ghost waiting for him at Harrow School - a pallid, spectral lad whose soul remains bound to earth by 200-year old cruelties and jealousies. Now add to the mix a bitter, washed-up poet grasping at his last chance to redeem himself; an eerily beautiful but precocious female classmate; White Devil, a bloody revenge tragedy authored by the troubled 19th century playwright John Webster; and rehearsals for a production of the life of the beautiful, scandalous, haunted Lord Byron (a Harrow School alumnus), to whom Andrew bears an uncanny resemblance ... set it all in an ancient boarding school complete with petty (and not so petty) adolescent cruelty, secrets concealed behind crumbling stone, and a string of mysterious deaths that begin soon after Andrew's arrival at Harrow ... stir vigorously, and enjoy losing yourself in a tale that is sure to keep you enthralled until the final paragraphs.

Props to Justin Evans, whose bio reveals no particular literary credentials, for producing this literate gothic thriller. It's not easy to produce extreme characters that don't come off as sterotypical, to create mood/atmosphere that doesn't come off as stagy, to construct a plot so dense that the story never stops delivering chills, and to resist the urge to wrap up the story with a full and pat disclosure that explains all. Evans writes with the mastery of language and assurance of a pro. How fortunate that the idea for this story fell into the hands of someone able to make the most of it!

I chose this book from the Vine selection for a couple reasons: 1.) I'm English and attended an English boarding school (Winchester) before migrating to the colonies. 2.) I seem to be on a Byron kick of late, having recently finished reading his complete letters and diary entries. Author Justin Evans is an American who, like our protagonist Andrew Taylor herein, spent a year at Harrow. There were a few Yanks at Winchester too, so I was interested in how Evans depicted it all. My verdict - It all comes across as rather stock and mediocre, rather what one expects to find than any grand surprises or disclosures.

The book will be best appreciated by those who adore Gothic atmospherics for their own sake and who, as Evans admits in the "essay" on this Amazon page, believe in actual ghosts. Some reviewers, no doubt unduly influenced by Harry Potter, seem troubled by the homosexuality and drugs depicted in the book. Trust me, Evans is not letting you in on the half of it.

Evans plays fast and loose with Byronic scholarship here, which didn't bother me so much. It's a work of fiction, after all. But he does depict Byron as the stereotypical roué most people think of him as rather than the complicated human being that he was. Also, for those interested, John Harness is based on an actual historical figure, John Eccleston, whom Byron mentions in his early letters and for whom he clearly felt some sort of affection. Also, again for those interested, the Latin quotes on the chalkboard are from Virgil's Aeneid, which every six-former must master to graduate. They remain untranslated in the book, so here are my ad hoc translations:

1.) (p. 87 in the ARC) "And from the highest summit the nymphs cried out..."

2.) (p. 175 in the ARC, to which I'm adding the famous line that precedes it, "Facilis descendus Averni :") "It is easy to descend into Hell: Night and day the door stands open to the darkness of Dis."

Dis is the god of the underworld.

My final take on the book is that, in the end, it is in no sense a thriller in the common usage of the word (as other reviewers have noted), nor is it particularly original, but it does, ironically, make for good "comfort reading" on dark and stormy nights with the duvet pulled up over one.