Scott Phillips takes Bill Ogden, protagonist of Cottonwood, and transports him years and miles away for this new novel, The Devil Raises His Own. Phillips also adds a huge cast of scoundrels, strivers, and schemes to make things interesting. This mosaic of a novel roams through all kinds of dingy corners of World War I-era Los Angeles to deliver brutal tales of comeuppance and acceptance.

The first chapters of The Devil Raises His Own provides a good snapshot of what’s to come. Flavia Odgen’s husband comes home in a drunk. When he tries to threaten his wife, Flavia kills him with a baseball bat to the skull. Because her husband was armed with a gun, Flavia isn’t charged with a crime, though her reputation is so damaged that she loses her job. Nothing daunted, Flavia ups stakes and goes to live with her rascal of a grandfather, Bill Odgen, in sunny Los Angeles.

I expected that this book would focus on Flavia and her grandfather but I was quickly disabused of that notion. The parade of characters begins immediately, with a chapter set in a trainyard where two hitchhikers briefly become allies before a sudden act of violence sends them hurriedly in different directions. Before long, we meet a woman who makes blue movies to support her children, an opportunistic couple in a lavender marriage, a black-mailing and sex-addicted postal inspector, and a repellant actor on his way down from stardom. Each of these characters is linked to someone we’ve previously met. It’s only at the end of the book that they all end up in one place at the same time when their various storylines ultimately collide. As I read, I could not get the image of someone frantically spinning plates out of my head.

It’s hard to know quite what to make of The Devil Raises His Own. I can’t think of any other books quite like it. Books with a lot of characters (looking at you, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy) and a lot of subplots tend to make it clear which characters and subplots are most important. But the diffuse focus of The Devil Raises His Own makes it feel as though all of the characters and plots are the primary ones. And, I suppose, might be the point this book wants to make: everyone is the main character in their own story.

Once I stopped trying to figure out who was protagonist, antagonist, or secondary character, I had more fun watching as all these main characters carommed off of each other. That said, there is so much to keep track of in this book that I dropped more than a few metaphorical plates. Readers who like books that break narrative conventions and anarchic characters will enjoy The Devil Raises His Own. I also think this book will appeal to readers curious about the seedier side of early Hollywood.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Soho Press for an advance copy this thriller set in the nascent days of the Hollywood film industry both above and underground, and the dreamers, schemers, innocents and psychos who tried to make they way in this new world of entertainment.

Louis Daguerre presented his idea of daguerreotypes, the first practical photography process in 1839 and within a few short months, Parisians could purchase photos of nude models. This is common in most technology dealing with the entertainment world. The first movie that could be considered pornography was made, again in Paris in 1896. And as this made money, other people took notice, and soon movies, considered stag films became the thing. These movies played in smokers, where groups of men would gather, drink and smoke cigars set up in industry that made lots of money for certain people for years. The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips is a thriller set in Los Angles at a time the film industry was starting to take a hold on America, with a darker industry just below the surface. Industries that attracted dreamers, and dangerous people all wanting a chance to grab the brass ring of success.

The book takes place before the First World War in the city of Los Angeles, where the film industry was just getting going, and people were coming to forget their past, and start anew. Or get revenge. Bill Ogden has been many things in his life. Now in his 70's he is semi-retired from his photography business, taking photos that interest him, helping others, and maybe doing a little glamour photography for a few bucks. Ogden shares his business with his granddaughter Flavia, who had to leave home after defending herself from her drunken husband, and a gun. They are joined by young man full of energy and an interest in learning the film trade, as anything has to be better than digging coal, and a young starlet, with dreams of making it in films. Across town a director down on his luck has ideas of making a studio to make blue or stag movies, with proper lighting, better cameras, and he might have found the star to take him to the next level. Rounding this off is Ezra a drifter with a temper, looking for his wife and children, whose paths cross many of these characters lives, sometimes not in good ways.

A novel about Los Angeles, film, darkness and the evil that humans are capable of, and the lengths that many will go to to be free. The book is written as almost vignettes with characters wandering around, bumping into others, before going back to their own adventures, until the final chapters. The POV switches between characters, lots of characters, but Phillips is a very good writer and never loses the reader, nor confuses. This is a really powerful story with a lot of scenes that might disturb people, but is really quite good, interesting and very different. I enjoyed the look behind the curtain. Phillips does a very good job of capturing the era, and the place. Ogden is a good guy, interesting, loyal, funny, and with an infinite capacity to find himself in the right place at wrong time, or vice-versa. The story moves well, and the multiple plots all come together quite well in a very satisfying, violent end.

Pungent, witty, and fast-paced. A ripping good classic Hollywood noir that balances the nostalgia nicely with the grit and leavens everything with whip-smart dialogue. Phillips did his research, but in a way that makes this feel lived-in and not like homework.