The Devil's Playground: Where horror is silent . . .

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It starts with a literal bang in Act I, Scene 1: Mike and his fiancée, Stacey Stevens, are celebrating their engagement, but the festivities are interrupted by a speedboat crash on the adjacent lake. It was a lot to take in at first, especially with three different timelines, but they are expertly brought together by the end. A Stolen Child is Sarah Stewart Taylor’s fourth entry in her excellent series featuring American police detective Maggie D’arcy, who has relocated to Ireland and joined the Garda, the national police force of the island nation. It swirls and dips and is actually hard to describe except that it will pull the reader into the quest.

Moving onto the story, the storyline is about a fictional film “The Devil’s Playground” (circa 1927) which we are told is the greatest of horror films and the film is said to be cursed. Doiron packs in lots of twists and turns, and enough suspense to keep you reading well past bedtime.

The Devil’s Playground, set partly in a richly evoked 1920s Hollywood, plays like Chinatown meets The Ring, and it’s the most sheerly entertaining novel I’ve raced through in at least a year … fresh, forceful, elegant but wild. Homicide investigations don’t really fall under Mike’s purview, but as one of the local cops ruefully notes, Mike seems to insinuate himself into more such investigations than is usual for a game warden. The brooding backdrop of a Czechoslovakia on the brink of World War II just adds another layer of atmosphere to an already nightmarish read. Interspersed within the earlier timelines are smatterings of, black magic and other horror elements and lots of twists and turns to keep readers interested. But it's not that easy and this complex novel moves back and forth between multiple time periods ranging from the 1890s to the 1960s, although it's mostly set in 1920s Hollywood.

Fast-forward to 1967, and journalist Paul Conway has been hired to find the one remaining copy of The Devil’s Playground, which is supposedly at a remote location in the California desert—if it even exists. Then the POV goes back to win the movie was being shot at first glance it looks like the main actress has killed herself Mary Rourke who is a Hollywood fixer and helps clean up negative happenings thanks she was way too selfish for that and believes she was murdered and although she will try to keep it on the down low it seems everyone she talks to already knows about it. The dialogue is smart; the action is fast and furious; and the the heroine, heroes, and villains are difficult to discern making everyone a suspect and surprises all the more delicious. It’s a period piece, transporting readers to a glamorous time in old Hollywood just before “talkies” started being made. I will admit, early on, I had problems with the over descriptive writing and all the comparisons of book’s settings to film scenes.Russell has brilliantly captured post-war Glasgow and the vulnerability of those left to pick up the pieces. The narrator in the 20s is Mary Rourke, a Hollywood studio fixer who is tasked to unravel the mysterious happenings on set. Russell has created a truly frightening story, one that gets under your skin slowly, then goes deep, like the tip of a butcher knife. You will want to take your time with this book so you can absorb, retain and understand all the descriptions and happenings. You don’t have to wait long for the action to begin in Paul Doiron’s 14th novel featuring Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch, Dead Man’s Wake.