Diablerie Book

Mosley is best known for his action/mystery novels, especially those featuring Easy Rawlins. Though a success through the years, he's been somewhat saddled by the fact that none of the followups in that series matched his first, Devil in a Blue Dress. But in between the more formulaic pieces he's gone in different other directions with varies success.

"Diablerie," to my mind, is the best he's done in years - a short, intense novel driven entirely by character and relationships. The narrator, Ben Dybbik (maybe a little heavy on symbolism here?), is haunted by his own emptiness and an alcoholic past that is mostly a dead blur. There's an existential quality to his inability to love, to mesh with, even to comprehend the people (especially the women) closest to him. If there isn't an influence from Camus here, there's certainly a parallel.

A woman from his amnesiac past stumbles on him by accident, and from that point - though he can remember nothing of her or of those days decades past - she seems determined to undermine his life. But her attempts, in the end, lead to something like a resolution of his demons. Will it last? Hard to say, especially as he may be guilty of all she says he is. A fascinating study of loss that seems to be its own justification.