THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND

In pre-talkie Hollywood, a murder probe and a spooky movie form the core of this convoluted tale.

Film scholar Paul Conway drives to an old hotel in the Mojave Desert in 1967, hoping to find the one existing print of the “greatest horror movie” ever made: The Devil’s Playground. Flashback to 1927 Hollywood, where Mary Rourke works for the film studio Carbine International as a fixer, the person who cleans up the messes made by actors that could damage careers and business. Her current mess is the death of Playground’s star, Norma Carlton, a murder made to look like a suicide. Flashback again, to the bayous of Louisiana in 1893 and 1907, where nasty things happen to people who trifle with Hippolyta Cormier and her daughter, Anastasie. There’s witchcraft and Voodoo, gunplay, arson, and premature burial. In his previous novel, The Devil Aspect (2019), Russell handily managed two parallel narratives concerning madness and murder. Here the 1927 story dominates, with the evil that lurked in Louisiana now looming over Tinseltown and Rourke’s investigation of Carlton’s killing. Corpses accumulate. Russell tosses in what may be red herrings, but nothing is what it seems to be amid the artifice of Hollywood. In Rourke he has a strong character who carries much of the narrative as she digs into the money, power, and corruption of 1920s Los Angeles, allowing Russell to play with some colorful Hollywood names and legends. Her sections often have a noirish tone that sets them apart from the somewhat gothic atmosphere in the other time frames. The conclusion ties up a lot of loose ends in what has been a busy plot, but some readers may figure things out sooner, as Russell drops a few obvious clues early on. He also has a weakness for unsubtle foreshadowing—“His destiny. He would bring people fear”—that recalls the screen-size title cards of silent films.

Intriguing and entertaining.