We meet Ford and Neuland, the protagonist duo of Pale House Devil, on a stakeout in Manhattan. Their employer, Mr. Garrick, has assigned them to kill a living person dressed in velvet selling something to a Marcheur—an undead. But when their target arrives, they hesitate. She doesn’t look evil, they say. She’s selling only a necklace that, rationally, is hers to sell—and she’s pregnant.
The two of them know each other well enough that they don’t even have to discuss it. They drive the van back to Mr. Garrick’s office building and confront him with their deduction: that Garrick had gotten her pregnant and now wanted her dead, her only crime having been smart enough to have already bought her ticket out of town. When Garrick snaps at them, Neuland shoots him—and when he gets back up, Ford shoots him again. That’s how their system works: Neuland, who’s undead, kills the living; Ford, who’s living, kills the dead.
It’s an opening which tells us a lot about Ford and Neuland. They’re not scrupulous men; they’re hired killers who’ll work for anyone that offers them enough money, and will gun down their targets in cold blood. But they have their own moral code, too, which they’ll choose over the job: They don’t like seeing the powerful tread on the less-powerful. Despite the societal stigma surrounding the dead, both men are entirely comfortable together, whether on a stakeout or a long train journey, and they can trust that they have each other’s backs.
That distaste for the powerful means they instantly dislike their next contractor, too: the cruel, domineering, wealthy Shepherd Mansfield, who wants them to kill the monster that he believes has been pursuing him for years. A devil, he calls it, who drove him and his descendants out of their family home, Pale House—a “hungry bastard” that’s shrugged off all his attempts to have it killed so far. In his attempts to stop it pursuing him, he’s filled the grounds of his estate with dug-up dead bodies, and the chapel there with wards made of bones and human skin.
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The Pale House Devil
Ford and Neuland quickly suspect Mansfield isn’t telling them everything. How did the devil come to Pale House in the first place? Why is Mansfield so determined to get rid of it now, if it’s occupied Pale House for decades? Nor do they like the way he treats his great-granddaughter, Tilda Rosenbloom, who he originally sends to fetch them for the contract and who he belittles at every opportunity. But the money’s good, and after killing Garrick they’re on a lot of underworld hit lists—so despite their reservations, they accept the job to go to Pale House and kill the monster.
Kadrey is best known for his Sandman Slim novels, which are supernatural noir following the adventures of James Stark, a hitman and bounty hunter resurrected out of Hell to get revenge on the people who sent him there (and which are currently being adapted into a movie). Pale House Devil hits many of the same notes—antiheroes who aren’t above underhanded tactics doing their best to survive in a screwed-up world—and it’s impossible to say that Kadrey isn’t good at them. We sympathize with Ford and Neuland despite their bloody work, because we understand it’s a bloody world they live in.
The one downside is that Pale House Devil is a novella, and so Kadrey doesn’t quite have the space or time to explore all the twists and turns that the story seems to promise. Noir as a genre is known for betrayals and secrets, moments that make readers re-evaluate the story and the protagonists start from scratch. The Sandman Slim series certainly boasts its share.
Pale House Devil does its best to set up those moments. There’s the friction between our two hitmen and Mansfield, where neither trust the other but are dependent on them for money or for protection. There are the underlying questions of how magic works in this world, how devils and monsters can be summoned from another world and how Marcheurs like Neuland are resurrected. Kadrey manages them well, but there’s a sense of inevitability in the novella he can’t avoid; past a certain point, I knew nothing was going to radically change the story simply because there weren’t the pages to do so.
Still, it was a fun read! Kadrey’s blend of gritty fantasy and wisecracking humor is always an enjoyable time. If that’s what you’re looking for, Pale House Devil is a strong addition to Kadrey’s repertoire.
The Pale House Devil is published by Titan Books.
Charles Bonkowsky is the president of Columbia University’s Science Fiction Society and loves talking to people about books.
