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THE DEVIL'S OWN by Christopher Nicole

THE DEVIL'S OWN

By

Pub Date: Oct. 22nd, 1975
Publisher: St. Martin's

The author continues his ""history"" of the West Indies begun in the sanguinary, lubricious Caribee (1974)--and this time wide-screen atrocities nose out sex, although there's an obligatory amount of dandling. Hero of this gut-twanger is Kit Hilton, grandson of the Governor of Tottuga, who sees his grandmother hung by Spaniards, joins pirate Henry Morgan, rapes and kills, repents, and winds up in Antigua, governed by ruthless Philip Warner who has sired the beautiful Marguerite. Hilton eventually weds Marguerite--who manages with iron hand her plantation, where runaway slaves are burnt alive (there's a snap-crackle-pop account) and where there's a mating compound. But Marguerite is too much for Hilton and he turns to kind Quaker Lillian. There are uprisings, attacks by French and Spanish, tortures, floggings, hackings, but only one tar-and-feathering. A regression from the sloshbucklers of yesteryear where atrocities and beddings were rationed to prevent early satiation--inevitable here.