The Devil Inside by D.L. Hicks

Publisher's Synopsis

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Revelation 2:10

In a peaceful coastal town, a young woman is found brutally murdered, a piece of scripture held tightly in her hand. Local detective Charlotte Callaghan is put on the case, and she’s glad for the distraction – Gull Bay can be a hard place to keep a secret, and she’s holding on to a few.

After Charlotte asks her brother, Father Joseph Callaghan, about the verse, her suspicions fall on his parishioners. Then a second victim is found, along with another biblical message.

A dark betrayal is concealed within the small community. For Charlotte, there’s something personal about this case, something that threatens the very core of her beliefs. Can she unravel this mystery before it tears her town apart?

A gripping crime novel about murder, betrayal and the monsters who hide in plain sight. The Devil Inside examines the line between good and evil, and how circumstance can alter a person’s life in the blink of an eye.

My Review of The Devil Inside by D.L. Hicks

The Devil Inside is the debut novel by Australian author D.L. Hicks and it’s a darkly disturbing crime thriller that combines the terror invoked by a serial killer with the psychological trauma of child abuse among other triggering themes. There’s much to unpack in this small-town drama that moves swiftly and decisively.

In the small coastal town of Gull Bay, Detective Charlotte Callaghan is called out to a murder scene. A young woman has been brutally killed and left holding a small card containing a piece of scripture, clearly a message for the police to find. She will be the first in a string of local women who will be found in very similar circumstances.

This is a story that’s told in dual narratives. The primary narrative takes place in the present day while the second goes back to 1987 where a pair of young altar boys are regularly abused by the parish priest. The clear inference is that one of these boys is going to grow up to become the man responsible for the killing spree.

The cards quoting scripture were actually distributed by Father Joseph Callaghan, the local catholic priest, at each weekly mass. He also happens to be Charlotte’s step-brother and offers to provide whatever help he can in possibly working out whether the killer could be a parishioner.

Clues begin to build up in the present day narrative, the question remains whether they’re actual clues or planted ones aiming to misdirect the investigation. Back in 1987, the horrors of each successive Sunday morning are mounting up to a near unbearable level.

Charlotte is portrayed from early on as a top notch detective, however too many times she took information at face value without bothering to dig deeper to confirm first appearances. It led to mistakes, needless confrontations and false trails, all of which could have been avoided with some decent detective work. It happened often enough and hampered the investigation so much that I found myself becoming extremely unsatisfied, mainly because I could see what was going on even if Charlotte couldn’t.

The Devil Inside is a police procedural murder mystery that tackles some fairly incendiary topics and, for the most part, does so with deference to the emotional toll that it takes on the victims. The plight of Charlotte as the lead character is unique and the knife edge on which she rode through the majority of the book was completely enthralling. It’s a pity she wasn’t quite the detective she could have been.

The story unfolded in a fairly predictable manner and I was congratulating myself for identifying the killer reasonably early only to be blindsided by a couple of twists that completely threw me off balance. I find it rare that an epilogue has a dramatic impact on my opinion of a book, but this one has ensured the story has stayed in my mind long after I closed the last page.