Praise for The Devil's Best Trick:
“A master class in the difficult art of first-person, narrative nonfiction…The prose has wonderful momentum even when he’s writing about arcane debates in the early Christian church. Each chapter is a turn, a surprise. The writing is never clichéd, nor is the thinking. Sullivan knows a great lede, and he’s just as good with cliffhangers.” Clancy Martin in The New York Times Book Review
“A gonzo and sometimes chilling account… The book’s most entertaining writing is memoiristic… with self-deprecating humor, but what holds it all together is a sincere yearning to understand evil. It’s a dizzying plunge into darkness in search of moral clarity.”—Publishers Weekly
“A compelling journey into the heart of darkness with an articulate, capable guide.”—Kirkus
“The devil does exist, though his best trick is to convince us he does not, Sullivan believes. His well argued book will intrigue both skeptics and true believers.” —Booklist
Praise for Randall Sullivan:
“A strikingly rendered tale of the hard and lasting costs of courage.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“Sullivan thoroughly details a case fraught with tension, complexity, and many key figures . . . Intensive, engaging investigative journalism.”—Library Journal on Dead Wrong
“Sullivan has done what every aspiring true-crime writer hopes to do: He has crossed the line from titillation into cultural history.”—Los Angeles Times on The Price of Experience
“The most thorough examination of these much-publicized events. Exhaustively researched, the book methodically weaves a disturbing story of corruption, intimidation, and murder.”—Boston Globe on LAbyrinth
2024-01-19
An investigation of evil and how it manifests in our society.
As an acclaimed journalist, Sullivan, author of Graveyard of the Pacific, Dead Wrong, and other books, thought of himself as a man of reason and intelligence, with a good dose of cynicism. Then, when covering the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia, he confronted too many atrocities to believe that nothing was behind them. The author sensed the presence of evil and began to research the origin of it, which led him to the fundamental figure of malignity. While researching the book, Sullivan brushed against inexplicable, personal incidents—e.g., a weird threat from a well-dressed stranger, an ominous letter in his mailbox, the dream image of a black dog. The author shows how Christianity gave the Devil a personification, a central role, and a name. Sullivan looks at the theologians who wrestled with the conflict between the persistence of evil and the presence of an omnipotent God, finding that none of them reached a satisfying conclusion. He also studies a number of serial killers and murders, as well as accounts of a carefully documented, nightmarish exorcism that lasted four months in Iowa in 1928. Yet somehow, writes Sullivan, the Devil has been able to convince everyone that he does not exist, so is “able to hide in plain sight because of the cover we all give him with our fear, our denial, our rationalization, [and] our deluded sense of enlightenment.” The author believes that the Devil is real, but, he adds, each of us is responsible for our own decisions. This is not an easy book to read, and some parts are profoundly disturbing. Sullivan offers crucial insights, but timid readers should think carefully before entering its dark labyrinth.
A compelling journey into the heart of darkness with an articulate, capable guide.