Customer Reviews

Known Devil: Occult Crimes Unit Investigations, Book 3 (Unabridged)

This is the third book in the OCU series, and it’s well worth starting at the beginning with Hard Spell to fully understand all the plot threads and character interactions. Author Justin Gustainis hasn’t just sprinkled trolls, gnomes, vampires and werewolves all over the shop for headline effect. It's a nifty mix of urban myth and police procedural, Detective Stan Markowski of the Occult Crimes Unit gets embroiled in a mafia family feud, uncovers a political plot, dodges bullets and bombs, and must counter a new street drug that’s driving even elves to armed robbery.

Multiple storylines are neatly interwoven, using a growing cast of intriguing, credible characters. There’s a little bit of love interest, but mainly the focus is on the investigation into a series of increasingly violent events. We bounce from blood-soaked crime scenes to seedy bars to squad rooms and run-down diners. The pace doesn’t pause too often and the dialogue can be extremely droll, littered with dozens of references to current events and pop culture. The author tweaks actual names of films, songs, cars and such to give them all a slight supernatural twist – so characters might drive a posh Hexus, f’rinstance.
Gustainis has a real gift with the well-aimed, single-line description so familiar from old-fashioned hard-boiled detective fiction. There’s a wry smile on almost every page – and a seamless segue into genuinely tense action scenes. We also get time to draw breath and enjoy the developing characters. Karl in particular is feeling his way as a newbie vampire and there’s some interesting stuff in here as he experiments with Influence, the power of the crucifix and even staying awake…
The only part I didn’t enjoy so much about Known Devil was the political plotline. Won’t go into detail and give too much away, but it overlapped with themes from Trueblood to do with persecution of minorities and agitating extremist activities. Just felt a bit ‘been there, done that’, which stands out because the rest of the book succeeds in bringing a new perspective to well-trodden territory.

Overall, Known Devil gave me an entertaining evening and I’m looking forward to the next episode.

8/10

The latest Justin Gustainis which takes us back to spend more time with the Police Unit that deals with the things that go bump in the night generating not only a real kickass story but one that brings the wonderfully thorny Markowski to the reader.

I love spending time with this principle character as he resolves his human side against the otherness of the people he deals with. Its quirky, has a great overall arc and when added to a criminal element goes on to show how tricky policing the unusual can be. Its definitely something that I would recommend to others and a series that has done nothing but entertain since its original release.

Add to this adventure a new danger to the otherworld community of Slide, the return of an old foe and of course a whole workload for our hero to deal with and all round you'll be in for a treat. Great stuff.

This was a funny book to read and review. It continued on the same kind of style of the preceding books, and there was a lot to like about that. The plot line made sense and the mystery was pretty good too. The author's overall style is quite good.

But I did have some issues. Slight spoilerish themes ahead:

.
.
.
.
.

Where the book really suffered was the main character. We observe the slow change to the dark side as he makes darker and more dubious decisions. In the context of his musings they are justified, but as the reader looking in? A simple step back and thinking about it shows his justifications are all on what MIGHT happen. Or in some cases keeping the status quo.

Now, maybe the author is a genius and this is deliberate, and a subsequent book is going to bring home to the Detective exactly how dark his decisions have become, and which side he's now batting for. But I suspect not. I suspect the author hasn't really thought through how flimsy the justifications he used were, or what the detective really did. We've all heard the arguments for the ends justifying the means, but the ends here were nowhere near certain.

Overall, I just couldn't shake the feeling the main character should be sent to prison. And that took a lot of gloss off the book.

I've just completed all three books in the series and Known Devil carries on seamlessly from book two. I enjoyed the Cosa Nostra aspect of the book and it was good to see a bigger role for Karl in this one, though the book left the nature of Karl's relationship with Christine hanging, so presumably that would be addressed in a subsequent volume. This is procedural detective work which is a marked departure from most urban fantasy at book stores - overall a solid read with an enjoyable protagonist who keeps working the case like any good gum-shoe would.

In 2012 I developed a taste for supernatural police procedurals, when I read Scott Sigler's Nocturnal and Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London and Justin Gustainis' Evil Dark was the one that confirmed that these sorts of books were really my thing. After finishing Evil Dark I was really looking forward to reading the next instalment in the Haunted Scranton series and, after two years, this weekend I finally got to return to Scranton and Detective Sergeant Markowski and friends. Known Devil was a blast, with the same sense of humour that had me chuckling out loud when reading Evil Dark and another action packed adventure.

We once again follow the tale of Stan Markowski, his partner Karl Renfer and Stan's daughter Christine. Stan is almost your typical plain clothes detective seen in so many crime novels and TV shows, except for the fact that he works in a unit concerned with supernatural crime. Still, Stan is a cop in a familiar mould, dedicated, determined and stubborn, but with a heart of gold. Yet Known Devil sees Stan taking some hard decisions to keep his loved ones safe, decisions that will affect his far beyond the scope of this novel. One of these loved ones is his partner and best friend Karl. I love the progress Karl makes during the novel. Still adjusting to his status of being undead and having fangs, he's learning what this means for his life and how it limits what he can do. Especially the therapy to desensitize him to crucifixes is genius. The other loved one closest to Stan is his daughter Christine. Her role is a little smaller this time around, but I like how Gustainis works in their close relationship and their evening breakfast talks about the cases Stan works.

Known Devil's case is a good one, with plenty of action, danger and some surprising twists. We get the return of some known antagonists and I loved the scenes with the Fangsters, vampire mobsters, and those with the bomb squad. There were some elements that made me a bit twitchy, mainly to do with the fact that when Stan ignores a direct order from his boss no one calls him on it, in fact their departmental white witch, Rachel goes out of her way to help him afterwards. While it fits the narrative and Stan's character and his relationship with his boss, I just couldn't imagine Lieutenant McGuire just letting it slide like that.

As last time what made the book for me were all the real-world references which where tweaked to fit this alternate reality Scranton, which is filled with supernatural creatures and thus caters to their needs as well. There is the elf Thorontur, nicknamed Thor, though he doesn't resemble Chris Hemsworth. The head of the vampire mobster family is called capo di tutti vampiri and drives a car with the vanity plates BATDAD1. The department shrink is called Doc Watson, and the department witch Rachel consults an academic journal called Journal of the American Magical Association or JAMA for short. And that's just to name a few. Picking up on these Easter-egg-like elements was huge fun and Gustainis does them very well.

I had a great time with Known Devil and tore through it in a single sitting - with a break for food and putting the kids to bed - chuckling all the while and reading out good bits to my husband. Like Evil Dark, Known Devil stands alone quite well and you don't have to read the previous books to enjoy this one. However, if you haven't read any of these books before then you are in for a treat as they are hugely enjoyable. Meanwhile, Known Devil is a very enjoyable read that ends on a satisfying note, but leaves the door open for more adventures. I sincerely hope this isn't the last time we will see Stan, Karl, Christine and the rest. I'd love to return to Scranton in the future, but I'll have to settle for catching up on the first book in the series, Hard Spell, which I haven't read yet.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.