Claire Kilroy: DEVIL I KNOW Z90

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile He made a crooked deal and he blew a crooked pile He dug a crooked hole And he sank the crooked isle And they all went to hell in a stew of crooked bile. The Devil I Know is a thrilling novel of greed and hubris, set against the backdrop of a brewing international debt crisis. Told by Tristram, in the form of a mysterious testimony, it recounts his return home after a self-imposed exile only to find himself trapped as a middle man played on both sides - by a grotesque builder he's known since childhood on the one hand, and a shadowy businessman he's never met on the other. Caught between them, as an overblown property development begins in his home town of Howth, it follows Tristram's dawning realisation that all is not well. From a writer unafraid to take risks, The Devil I Know is a bold, brilliant and disturbing piece of storytelling.