So much fun, this book. If the idea of a noir horror comedy gets you excited, you need to get this book. A great read to start off 2014. ( )

It comes as no surprise that Justin Robinson, author of City of Devils, is an accomplished novelist with more than a dozen books under his belt. It takes a certain of amount of practice to be able to sustain a comic tone against the realities of the book's premise. City of Devils takes place in a Chinatown-meets-Who Framed Roger Rabbit fantasy reality in which World War II was followed by a "Night War" between humans and monsters, of a couple dozen varieties - witches, vampires, ogres, gremlins, werewolves, and so on. Robinson deals with the Night War events as backstory known to the narrator and presumably his listeners, therefore cleverly avoiding the necessity of fleshing it all out.

The upshot of the Night War was an uneasy truce in which monsters clearly have the population and the power, but are restricted from preying on the dwindling number of humans during daylight hours. At night, anything goes. In a confrontation, the monsters can be defeated (rather too easily, in my view) by the use of many of the time-honored charms and warding-off substances, and a few new ones.

Our protagonist, Nick Moss, the last remaining human detective in the greater Los Angeles area, carries a shop's-worth of these protections around with him at all times, which must ruin the line of his jacket. But Nick has worse problems to deal with. Not being able to safely go out at night handicaps his detective practice, and every monster in sight is trying to "turn" him, make him another of their kind. The pumpkinhead that hangs out on his lawn is particularly desperate and annoying (and funny).

Nick generally maintains his good cheer, despite the fact that this would be a distressing world to live in. Occasionally he does get rueful:

"Still, had to warn the robot and the crawling eye that the gremlin was going to kill them. And then hate the fact I lived in a world where such a sentence was said with a straight face."

It ain't all sunny for the monsters, either. They turn humans out of desire - it is their equivalent of sexual desire - but also out of necessity; they cannot "reproduce" in any other way. Since the supply of humans will eventually run out (sooner rather than later, presumably; human children are scarcely mentioned in the book), and since monsters CAN die (we get several spectacular examples), the end-game is not looking particularly good for either side.

A few premise quibbles may dawn on you if you're a spoilsport. Where the monsters "came from" in the first place, and how new varieties keep appearing - Nick can't remember human flies appearing "before about six months ago" - is not exactly made clear. The nature of Nick's or any other humans' resistance to being turned is not spelled out, either; Nick mentions that he likes being human, but it would take a good deal more heroic resolve than that to survive in such a world. The werewolves on the LAPD who want to bring Nick onto the force clearly do so because of his surprising skills, but I didn't notice a discussion of how much of a human's character and memories survives the transition to monsterhood.

Nick specializes in missing persons - missing HUMAN persons, who have usually already been turned - but at the start of the novel is asked by a female doppelganger movie star to find her mummy husband. This leads Moss into a labyrinth of monster equivalents of prostitution, pornography, and drugs, all very cleverly handled. The plotting of City of Devils is superior and a sign of a real craftsman.

Many Hollywood touches creep into the narrative, which you could argue about as to whether they are part of the satire or not. As mentioned, none of the monsters' stabs at turning Nick are effectual, and in a number of chase sequences, he evades his pursuers with aplomb (although he sure does get messed-up, necessitating frequent trips to his drycleaner). Although Nick's escape maneuvers are minutely described, I'm not sure that makes them any more plausible, and his relative ease in pulling them off reduces the monsters' scare factor by about 50%. In truth, Robinson's array of nasty beings are more akin to the classic movie versions of monsters that plague Abbott and Costello than to the legends behind them. There is not a single entity in the book who could give you the willies the way monsters in late Seventies and early Eighties horror movies could - Alien, The Fly, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

But all of my reservations noted, City of Devils is finally a most entertaining read, and if it leads to a series (that could expand on some of my question marks), no one would be complaining. ( )

If I hadn't wanted to get this review out in time for the book's publication (Sept. 24), it would've been a fitting October read - fast, funny, full of monsters and frights and new riffs on age-old themes. I like the world that Robinson has set up and I like Nick Moss - and while things felt a bit like a Hollywood lot at times (lots of lights on the facade, but no house behind it), I was happy to let the story rush over me instead of focusing too hard on anything in particular. There's a lot happening here, in a world-view sense, and it's to Robinson's credit that things hang together as well as they do. It's a fun take that nobody's ever done before and that alone makes it a worthwhile read for fans of the genres at hand.

Full review TK (on 9/16) at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-Ol ( )

Nick Moss is the last human private eye in a Los Angles run amuck with monsters. When a mummy politician goes missing, his beautiful doppelganger wife becomes the prime suspect, and it’s up to Moss to prove her innocence. Nick soon finds himself embroiled in the sordid world of corrupt werewolves, Hollywood big-shots and monster snuff films in this LA noir who-done-it.

City of Devils by Justin Robinson is utterly bizarre and a real hoot. Written in noir speak, it’s straight camp, which makes the absurdity of it work so well. Overflowing with wise cracks and characters with names like Phil Mooney and Lou Garou, it’s full of cleverness, puns, and of course, plot twists.

There’s a monster’s version of a bordello, biker phantoms with pompadours, and a trio of witch lounge singers. So close to Halloween, this book is great for some quick reading fun and to get you in the mood for the season.

Original review posted here: http://populuxe.ca/blog/?p=696

Let me try to sum this one up for you: Nick Moss, private detective in 1950′s Los Angeles, is the only non-monster still operating as a private dick. Not only is he the only human PI left, but he’s one of the dwindling few actual humans left in the city after the Night War where humans and monsters battled it out and finally came to an uneasy truce. Moss is hired by actress, and doppleganger, Imogen Verity to locate her missing husband, councilman (and mummy) Juba II after he goes missing and the police (who are all wolfmen or werewolves, depending on the part of the county you’re in) figure he’s dead and like Miss Verity for the crime. Nick Moss then finds himself embroiled in a missing persons case that ends up full of the monster equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, with a darker secret at the core of it all.

Oh ya, and it’s funny.

If that didn’t get you chomping at the bit to read this book, I’m not sure we can be friends.

The thing that really stood out for me with this book is the fact that Robinson obviously is very well versed in the realms of classic Hollywood monsters and classic pulp detective fiction, and he wrote this book because he loves those two things. We have not only classic vampires and wolfmen, but giant crawling eyes, pumpkinheads, gigantic robots, gill-men, mummies, and a host of other silly monsters that drum up instant visuals in the mind of monster-movie buffs everywhere. Then, on top of that, Robinson expertly plays with the standard tropes and practices of the classic detective novel (we’re talking your Chandlers and Hammetts here), and combining the two not only creates a good little mystery, but more importantly, this extremely well-rounded and interesting world. You throw humour into all of it and it has the breath of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency, without being a knock-off or ape of that book. It’s in the same genre, but not an imitation (what would you call the mash up of pastiche pulp detective novel, comedy, and monsters? We have to come up with a name because I love this genre).

There are small bits in this book that are just brilliant – and instead of being throwaway jokes Robinson uses them to help us better understand the world and the characters. My absolute favourite of these is Nick Moss constantly trying to smoke. He says at the beginning he carries around a pack to offer to clients and people he’s talking to, but he doesn’t actually smoke himself. He decides that in order to better fit the stereotype of the private detective he should really start himself, but whenever he tries to put one in his mouth he ends up looking like a doofus. For example:

I shook a cigarette out of the pack and managed to miss my hand. It rolled away into the dark, and I tried to pretend that had been the plan all along.

There are several of these, and they had me giggle every time. We even have a moment where Moss manages to get one up his nose by mistake. But not only does Robinson poke fun at the PI with a smoke constantly hanging out of his mouth, instead of a smooth-talking Marlowe or Spade, we have Moss who tends to yammer a bit, and speaking first without thinking, playing with another classic trope of the extremely bitingly witty and self-assured PI.

There’s also just plain great moments of suspense and description that really do read like Chandler or Goodis or Walsh.

Her voice was smooth, powerful, like good scotch with a gasoline chaser.

And:

“Verb please,” Daisy said, sighing, which in that low cut dress was practically a humanitarian mission.

There are so many other great one-liners, moments of humour, and examples of great character/world-building, but I don’t want to ruin it for you – these should really be read in their context. So just do yourself a favour and get the book.

Robinson doesn’t waste one opportunity to build the world or the characters, and when the book was over I was quite upset because I desperately wanted more. I would love to see more stories with Nick Moss, and I would love to find out more about the Night War that brought us to this alternate world where monsters dominate and humans are a dwindling breed.

I rarely give a book five stars, but this one deserves it whole-heartedly. City of Devils is definitely my favourite book that I’ve read this year so far, and will probably hold that title even though there’s almost four months left to go until 2014. ( )