The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

by John Shannon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In Shannon's searing 10th novel to feature Jack Liffey (after 2007's The Dark Streets), Jack and his pregnant teenage daughter, Maeve, run into trouble in Bakersfield, Calif., after stopping there for the night on their way home to Los Angeles. When a sleepless Maeve leaves their motel for a walk, she's falsely arrested for dope possession and jailed for a short time with Toxie, a rebellious teen with whom she discovers she shares a passion for Jane Eyre. Worried about Toxie, Maeve later returns from L.A. to Bakersfield, where Dennis Kohlmeyer, the paranoid pastor of the 10,000-member Olive Grove Evangelical Church, has incited his flock to hysteria against devil worshippers. Scenes of book burning, exorcism, wholesale jailings and worse may strike some as exaggerated, but Shannon cites actual examples of Bakersfield's long history of racial and social prejudice throughout. The plot-driven action builds to an either/or ending on which readers are invited to vote on the author's Web site. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the tenth installment of Shannon’s excellent Jack Liffey series, chance brings the ruminative PI and his headstrong daughter, Maeve, from L.A. to Bakersfield—and into a conflagration of anti-Satanist hysteria. The pregnant Maeve is incarcerated with other suspect teens, and Jack, his cop girlfriend, Gloria Ramirez, and a handful of colorful locals fight like hell to free her and restore the rule of law. While Liffey is constantly fine-tuning his moral compass, the bad guys he faces are usually zealots—like the megachurch pastor in this book—and the conflict is less black and white than black and gray. Here, Jack and Maeve’s intuitive morality meets unrelenting evangelical fervor, and the fight takes place in a literal fog. Interspersed throughout the story are historical artifacts, real and reimagined, that paint a portrait of the Central Valley city as having a long history of isolationism, intolerance, and inhospitality. This book won’t be loved by the local chamber of commerce, but its message is universal. And if the idea of religious hysteria overwhelming government, even momentarily, seems far-fetched to some readers, both history and current events provide plenty of precedents. Another winner from a writer whose own moral compass is holding steady. --Keir Graff

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pegasus Books (April 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933648295
• ISBN-13: 978-1933648293
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #950,237 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not an exaggeration, June 13, 2008

By	Book Lover (California) - See all my reviews

Very interesting and entertaining mystery. And if you think the depiction of what passes for "justice" in Bakersfield is an exaggeration, read Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes' book Mean Justice about DA Ed Jagels and his misuse of power. I live here. It is no distortion.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun read!, May 27, 2008

By	Megan Schultz (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First off, this is my first Jack Liffey mystery and one of only a handful of books that I have read of its genre. I picked up the book because I saw that it was set in Bakersfield, the city where I grew up, and because the author was going to be speaking at a bookstore near where I live now.

The book is a quick, fun read. While it has some slow parts, it is generally fast-moving and entertaining, never tedious. The author throws in some literary references here and there which are fun to spot and think about, but in general the book reads more like genre fiction. Sometimes the author delves into deeper issues and hits the reader over the head with them. He and, by extension, his protagonist Liffey, could be a bit more subtle. In a few places Liffey seems to make statements that are somewhat obvious--restating what has already happened. This doesn't further the story and sometimes makes it seem as if Shannon is using Liffey to lecture the reader.

Shannon's treatment of Bakersfield is a bit rough-handed, though in many ways its not that far off the mark. I really liked the historical artifacts that he put throughout the book. His use of historical context and fog were very creative and were a highlight of the book. It was fun seeing staples of Bakersfield like the Marketplace, the bluffs, and Oildale in print.

I'm struggling right now to give this book four stars. I think it's more of a 3.5 star book. It's 4 to 5 stars a lot of the way through, but the ending is just plain bad.

Overall, a very readable book that I would recommend to people who read crime noir and anybody who wants to read a book with a lot of the Central Valley in it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Accurate and humorous, June 1, 2008

By	regulargrind "DMK" (Bakersfield, CA) - See all my reviews

The author does a great job of flavoring this neo-noir novel with the names, eccentricities, locations, and history of intolerance in and around Bakersfield, California. (Being an outsider who's lived here for many years, his commentary on the "dales" (Stockdale, Rosedale, Oildale...) had me laughing out loud.) Really thought the use of news articles and reports about actual incidents involving KKK, John Birchers, violence against minority groups, worked well.