The Pale House Devil by Richard Kadrey

Review by Jordan S.

Richard Kadrey’s work has always scratched a very particular itch for me.

Ed and I, in some of our first conversations about fantasy fiction over a decade ago, talked about how there were some writers who wrote in a way that made you feel like they were dropping you into a living, breathing world. Part of that was the feeling that you were being dropped into a story that had been going on before the events of the book you were reading. Ed likened it to the first book feeling like you’d been dropped into a random episode of the fifth season of a television show—and somehow, it just all clicked and worked as the first book in a series.

Kadrey’s books have always been great at this, and The Pale House Devil, while clocking in at a slight 115 pages, is a perfect example of Kadrey’s skill in making you feel like you’re glimpsing a lived-in world.

The Pale House Devil follows two characters, Ford and Neuland, who are sorta hitmen/sorta enforcers/sorta private eyes, as they deal with the fallout of a job gone awry. In the aftermath, they flee New York and head west to California in an attempt to escape the heat the last job has brought down on them. Ultimately, this—and their continuing search for work—finds them approached by Tilda Rosenbloom, who is seeking someone with their specific skill set. Her employer, who also happens to be her grandfather, believes something is hunting him and needs someone to help kill it.

This book was a blast to read, and part of that came from how Kadrey immediately made it feel like this was a lived-in world with a history that would unfold over the course of the story. Ford and Neuland—one living and one dead, respectively—emerged as characters who required no suspension of disbelief to buy into the idea that they’d been doing this for years. This was accomplished by peppering in little references to past jobs and shared experiences. They evoked that feeling of other, in-my-mind legendary, pairs like Lansdale’s Hap & Leonard or John Connolly’s Angel & Louis, and just like both of those examples, I felt like I could read a dozen books about these characters and never get tired of them.

Kadrey has always been good at writing his side characters, and Tilda and her grandfather—the mysterious Mister Mansfield—were no different. Tilda, who in many ways plays the role of the audience in this story, is someone who is both so immersed in the world of the capital-W Weird and yet naive about it. She’s a perfect damsel in distress to draw in Ford and Neuland. She also has a fierceness, though, that immediately makes her an obvious kindred spirit to our protagonists. Something about her interactions with Ford and Neuland just clicks, and Kadrey maximizes the impact of this throughout the novella. Mansfield, on the other hand, is the perfect noir antagonist. He checks all the boxes: he’s reclusive, he’s wealthy, and he has a room wallpapered in human skins. Kadrey creates a character that both the audience and his protagonists are immediately distrustful of. Mansfield might be one of my favorite antagonists so far this year.

This is also a Kadrey book—which, if you’re in the know, means there are going to be some weird, Lovecraftian monsters. In the case of The Pale House Devil, the aforementioned devil is pretty cool. For some reason, my mind kept picturing it as a monstrous version of the caterpillar from A Bug’s Life and, honestly, that works for me. Kadrey, who has always excelled at making even his most monstrous monsters have a level of depth to them, continues that with this one. It’s not as clear-cut as “this monster is just haunting a house,” and by the time Ford and Neuland find themselves fighting it, this begins to pay off in loads of interesting ways.

This book is a fast (again, it’s only 115 pages long), Lovecraftian noir, and I loved every minute of it. The characters were great, the weird caterpillar/centipede monster was awesome and given far more depth than is the norm for monsters, and the plot was brilliant. It was the perfect example of everything I’ve come to love Kadrey’s books for—especially that vibe of “I’m seeing a world that has been going on for a long time before this first book.” I’m excited to know that this won’t be the last time we see these characters (Kadrey has a sequel coming out in October), and I’ve already pre-ordered that one. If you’re looking for a short horror novella to help break through the summer reading doldrums, I definitely recommend this one.