You thought you were watching a family drama? Think again buster, this is about aliens. Something seems to be about one thing, but is actually about something else. And for me, a subgenre of the twist that is especially powerful is the genre/subject twist. One of the most satisfying things in art is a successful twist.

If you haven’t yet, I’d recommend reading the book before going any further. It probably goes without saying, but spoilers for anything and everything about this book and its plot are below. In so doing, these stories push the genre past its limitations, allow for different and more interesting stories to be told. Like those other great works, this one utilizes the conventions of the genre while challenging them at the same time. The more this book played with these ideas, the more I started to think of other works in the true crime space, and how this book belongs among them: Zodiac, Serial Season One, In Cold Blood. Where Devil House starts to rise above some of the other works in this space has to do with how it’s not just illuminating a mystery, it’s also examining how telling a mystery story writes something back onto the world in turn. It’ll lay out the world for you if you in turn give it attention, make clear what was opaque at the beginning.

The slow inevitable reveal of a mystery is the promise of a true crime book. The slowness of the burn is what makes that ultimate revelation so satisfying, subverting our understanding of the world that it so meticulously created. I talked about my overall reading experience here, and some of the things I mentioned there come to bear on this, but the more time I spend thinking about this book, the more I’m struck by how gradually it reveals its interests.

Devil's house book