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Cover of The Devil's Only Friend

The Devil's Only Friend

Dan Wells

304 pages

A darkly thrilling, blood-spattered game of cat-and-mouse where the only thing scarier than the monsters is the sociopath hunting them.

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What it feels like

Reading this book feels like riding shotgun with a highly functioning sociopath on a monster-hunting road trip. It is a propulsive, blood-spattered thriller that balances clinical detachment with sudden, shocking bursts of supernatural violence. The narrative voice is what hooks you, wry, analytical, and deeply unsettling, yet strangely endearing as the protagonist wrestles with his own dark urges while fighting literal demons. The mood is relentlessly tense and macabre, steeped in the gritty reality of government kill teams and the grotesque horrors they hunt. It is a perfect fit for readers who love their urban fantasy laced with psychological horror, offering a fast-paced, dread-soaked experience that explores the razor-thin line between the monsters hiding in the shadows and the ones lurking in our own minds.

Mood
  • macabre
  • tense
  • dread-soaked
  • unsettling
Tone
  • clinical
  • darkly comedic
  • cynical
  • wry
  • gritty
Pace
propulsive
Themes
struggling with inner darkness · the nature of evil · isolation and connection · morality of violence · burden of purpose
The writing
Sharp, analytical, and darkly observant, perfectly mirroring the protagonist's sociopathic detachment from the horrors he encounters.
The arc
The protagonist moves from a state of detached, reluctant duty into a desperate, bloody struggle to preserve his fragile humanity and protect his few remaining connections.
Who it's for
Readers who crave dark, fast-paced supernatural thrillers featuring morally gray antiheroes and a heavy dose of psychological horror.
Content notes
  • graphic violence
  • gore
  • serial murder
  • cannibalism
  • mental illness

About the book

John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: They've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can...but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full-scale supernatural war.

John doesn't want the life he's stuck with. He doesn't want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn't want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn't want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn't want to kill people. But as the song says, you can't always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it.

When John again faces evil, he'll know what he has to do.

This description comes from the publisher. The Devil's Only Friend is the first book of the second John Wayne Cleaver trilogy, the first of the first of which is I Am Not a Serial Killer.

Description from Open Library.

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