I offered him a weak smile, my eyes bright with tears. Men liked that.


I Shot the Devil is a true-crime inspired thriller about Erin Sloane, a journalist for a crime magazine, who re-investigates the famous "satanic murder" case from her hometown, Southport. The catch: Erin has a deep emotional investment in the case, and its threads are far more deeply woven into her life than she initially realises.

I will attempt to leave out as many spoilers as possible as I discuss the positive and negative aspects of I Shot the Devil because this is a novel where you want to go in as blind as possible. It's absolutely one of the best books I read during 2021. Before I begin, however, I want to mention some potential triggers within the novel. Again, I don't consider these spoilers, as most of these points are introduced relatively early into the book's first few pages and chapters, but skip over the next paragraph if you're worried.

I sincerely appreciated that McIver's did not seriously take the "Satanic cult" angle. Right off the bat, we're told by Erin that neither she nor any of the other five members were "real Satanists", just metal-head teenagers who enjoyed defying their parents and pissing off the remaining adults around them. It is a breath of fresh air to see that McIver addresses, in parts, the sensationalism present when actual crime events happen, which includes the focus and emphasis on "Satanic Panic" and other "social outcast" narratives. Similarly, Ricky Hell's race and socio-economic context are taken into account around the media drive for a perfectly gorey story. The inconvenient complexities of Ricky's honest person, like him attending all of his sister's dance recitals, not wanting to even kill a bug, and genuine literary knowledge all contradict the Southport police and media's portrayal of a drug-dealing, Satan-worshipping teenage Hispanic psychopath.

McIver quickly scrutinises both the police institution and the media. Within this, we, the reader, are also criticised for our own complacency in contributing to the edgy, sadistic criminal narrative. Previous Southport residents are shown to have capitalised on the ensuring coverage, regardless of whether they knew the five members or not, twisting reality into fiction for their cut of the scoop. This mirrors how actual true-crime cases are covered and treated. Likewise, the true-crime forum website, where users submit theories and weave conspiracy about crimes committed, is a profoundly ironic reflection of identical spaces in our world. How race and class factor into the Southport Three's subsequent trial and punishment is also handled with nuance and care, usually in juxtaposition to Ricky Hell's poor, Hispanic background or Andre Villers' poor and overly religious outcasted family.

However, Erin's character is a strange one. McIver doesn't seem to know whether Erin's childhood was a nuclear well-to-do dysfunctional family or poor on a copper's dime. There are several points where Erin's working-class background - and current status - is contradicted, small luxuries or events seeming well out of a working-class family's payroll, such as hospital stays or anniversary gifts. This doesn't take away from the story and registers little more than a blip on the "huh. Odd choice, there" scale, but it is worth noting regardless.

Similarly, the writing style in later chapters feels erratic in moments. We gain many revelations in quick succession, with little time to digest it all before moving on to the following string of revealing information. Character's motivations and tone flip without real enticement - and though this doesn't happen constantly, and I understand it is so we can progress the narrative and investigation, these unpredictable switches add up after a while.

There are quite a lot of characters to keep up with. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you will have to pay more attention whilst reading to keep up with all the characters that feature or flitter in and out as the novel progresses. I wouldn't recommend reading I Shot the Devil semi-casually; being able to piece together and keep track of everything happening will take a notable amount of effort, particularly in the latter stages of the book.

Overall, I Shot the Devil is a compelling, genre-defying novel. It takes itself seriously enough to not fall into classic, actual crime fiction pitfalls of theatrical writing or one-dimensional approaches to how we perceive crime, those who commit it, and those who are affected by it.