Most crime-fiction readers feel comfortable with unreliable narrators, but that comfort vanishes only a few pages into this wildly unsettling, creepy blend of horror and thriller. We learn in the "Editor's Foreword," by journalist Daniella Barclay, that Grayson Hale has killed himself in an Edinburgh prison after admitting to murdering a graduate-school friend. What follows is Hale's memoir, with annotations from Barclay. Hale reprises a San Diego childhood in which his abusive mother and fundamentalist father drive him to something he calls "Satanophobia," a crippling fear of the Devil. Given that background, Hale's decision to ghostwrite a book about the Devil's presence in Scotland for a shadowy figure known as D. B. would seem, well, unhealthy. And so it proves as the fiends of Hale's youth revisit him in Scotland, heralding the arrival of the Devil, who may or may not be D. B. Does Hale's story comprise the ravings of a madman, fueled by sexual frustration, or did the Devil really do it? What makes this debut so chilling is that we desperately want to believe Hale, despite what that says about what's lurking outside our windows.

A methodical story about evil--its mystery and its toll--takes its murderous narrator past the brink of sanity. Grayson Hale has committed murder, claiming the devil made him do it. What makes this first-person novel so chilling is that Grayson, an American graduate student in Edinburgh, sounds completely sane, the product of an emotionally neglectful San Diego home who has suffered from satanophobia, or a paralyzing fear that the Adversary is coming for him. His parents, detached heads of a living-room church, barely gave him the time of day as he grew up neurotic and terrified. Now, in Scotland, an enigmatic stranger wants him to ghostwrite a book about the devil. The stranger, who goes by D.B., believes his countrymen no longer have a healthy fear and respect for Satan. Grayson really needs the money if he's going to pursue his doctorate. Of course, he has no idea what he's getting into. Lean and propulsive, this dissection of evil marches forward with a deadly logic and sleight of hand, with occasional gaps filled in by an enterprising journalist and a Scottish information commissioner. The key is that we feel for Grayson as he leads us up to the brink of his terrible deed. The characters surrounding him, from his ghoulish family to his annoying roommate to his eventual victim, come to life on the page, all part of Grayson's living nightmare. His bouts of satanophobia are characterized by visits from swarms of yellow-eyed fiends who crowd the aisle of the bus he rides. All the while he undergoes a crisis of faith; a one-time theological prodigy, he falls away from the calling even as its imagery fills his consciousness. It's a patient pursuit and a patient book, one that builds without the reader quite realizing it. It blurs the line between mental illness and something less definable, more supernatural and sinister. A muscular, enigmatic, and devilishly smart read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

DEBUT The American expatriate hero meets the Devil in this debut from Dumas. In Scotland, neurotic university student Grayson claims that the Devil possessed him to commit murder. Framed as his memoir, Grayson details his fanatical Christian childhood in California in alternating flashback chapters that hamper the pacing of his struggles with independent life abroad. An unreliable narrator, Grayson blames everyone but himself for his angst, but even so, his worst qualities are merely his high opinion of his own intellect and his cowardice. Needing cash, Grayson meets D.B., the Devil in human form, and is hired to write a strange book for him, but after a childhood like Grayson's, a mysterious, patient employer hardly seems frightening. However strange the material D.B. gives him to work with, Grayson's social anxiety always overshadows it. Eventually, the influence of Grayson's past mingles with his simmering jealousy towards a fellow student and ultimately ends in tragedy. VERDICT Scariest and most relatable for collections with a young adult readership tackling college in the near future.--Aaron Heil

Did the devil really make him do it? That question haunts Dumas's stellar debut, a complex whydunit. American Grayson Hale, a University of Edinburgh postgraduate student, has been convicted of murdering a colleague, Liam Stewart, whose strangled corpse was found in a loch months after his disappearance. Hale confessed, but claimed he had been under the influence of the devil. Following Hale's apparent suicide in prison, journalist Daniella Barclay, who covered the case, obtains access to the murderer's memoir. Barclay presents Hale's own account of the events preceding the murder, which starts with his meeting a mysterious man who offers him much needed money if he agrees to help write a book on the history of the devil in Scotland. Despite misgivings over his employer and several false starts, Hale agrees, only to become trapped in a nightmarish world where he's harassed by winged fiends and seems to have become a catalyst for violence in others. Vivid prose enhances the twisty plot; Liam's Scottish accent is "melodic yet underpinned by something hard and jagged, like clear water flowing over a bed of pointed rocks." Admirers of Andrew Pyper's The Demonologist will be riveted. Agent: Maria Whelan, InkWell Management. (Dec.)