“The Devil’s Only Friend” is the latest installment in Dan Wells’ John Cleaver series that began with “I Am Not a Serial Killer”, and nearly ended with “I Don’t Want to Kill You.” After several years and some other projects, Wells is back, and so is John, our troubled sociopathic teenager (no, that’s not being redundant, and if you read the series you’ll understand why a lot better) who studies serial killers with the specific goal of not becoming one of them. He created his own set of rules to live by to keep himself from going down that path.
The problem is, all that study also equipped him with the tools to identify other serial killers, so when a series of murders occurred in his small home town he was the first to understand what they were up against–or so he thought. He was right, but very wrong at the same time. This killer was something supernatural–a demon, for lack of a better word. Suddenly John was in over his head and having to bend or even break his own rules in order to protect his town.
Had that been the only one, he would have been fine. But the subsequent books revealed there are many demons, or “Withered” or “Cursed”, among us, and some of them didn’t take kindly to John’s killing one of their own. He was forced to fight others to protect his town, and each time the personal cost to John increased. After losing his mother and the only girl he truly loved he’s got nothing more to hold him to his home town. In the beginning of “The Devil’s Only Friend” we find he has been recruited by a special FBI team tasked with hunting down these demons. His ability to understand the Withered and identify their weaknesses is invaluable, but the team tends to keep him at arms length and out of the main action, which provides him with little outlet for his sociopathic urges.
But while on assignment in another town John and the rest of the team suddenly find themselves up against a rapidly growing number of Withered, and it appears the hunters are becoming the hunted in an all-out war. John must operate at his best if they’re to survive–and yet increasingly working as a team only gets in his way and puts lives at risk. And to further complicate things, Brooke, a girl he used to have a crush on, and who got caught in the middle of one of his previous demon hunts, is part of the team and his only remaining link to his former life. It’s going to be hard enough to keep himself alive, but he’s got to try to save her, too.
This fourth installment is very much in line with the previous novels, though most akin to “I Don’t Want To Kill You”. But since John is now part of a professional team, it’s pretty clear that Wells is going to have to “up the stakes”, too. The body count (and body parts) rises rapidly in this one, and though Wells tries not to be gratuitous, he doesn’t shrink from description, either. Gore is not the main focus, but it’s there. Language is kept minimal, and there’s no sex to speak of. For suspense/horror, it’s tame enough I can handle it. The real suspense comes from unraveling the clues and riding the twists and turns in the plot–of which there are plenty. Though Wells gives you hints at the twists, I seldom figured them out too far beforehand, and though I picked up on several, there were many more that I didn’t. Not that it mattered. I mainly enjoyed following along and feeling the cold thrill of those “Oh-my-heck-this-changes-things!” moments.
Wells keep the pacing taught enough to keep you turning pages, but not to the point of wearing you out. My only regret was that I was unable to read the last seventy pages without interruption, so the final showdown and payoffs didn’t have the impact for me it could have. I would recommend you save the ending until you have the time to finish uninterrupted.
In general I’m a fan of Wells’ style, though not all of his books have had the same appeal for me. His Serial Killer series, however, continues to deliver. It’s not a genre I generally follow, but Wells does it well enough I gladly keep coming along for the ride.