This book is described as a cultural, historical and religious study of evil and the Devil; how various civilizations throughout History have viewed the concept of an “ultimate evil”, and references several major literary, religious and historical figures, from the Persian sages Zoroaster and Mani, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, John Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, Aleister Crowley, and many more, among them Charles Baudelaire, whose story “The Generous Gambler” is where Sullivan got the title. With a side trip into the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980’s, Mexican “Black Magic” rites, serial killers, and a four month-long exorcism.
That is not the book I got.
What I got started out with a Prologue best described as “Sam Spade does a Supernatural takeoff on one of those bad History Channel/Discovery Channel Paranormal Investigator shows”.
Or maybe “Unsolved Mysteries”. It was just a little “I take myself so seriously I come across accidentally hilarious”. Sullivan apparently believes the Devil personally attempted to attack him in the middle of Italy. Okay, you do you; apparently Randall Sullivan believes himself to be a real life John Constantine.
The next 156 pages of a 333 page book (actually 302 if you take out the Index) is his investigations into an unsolved murder that occurred in Childress, Texas in the 1980’s, with the bare bones addition of the growing belief in the concept of the Devil throughout history. Spoiler: if it’s not about Roman Catholicism, it’s going to get the scantest information possible. And never mind Atheism; apparently the only place Atheism can go if taken to its utmost conclusion is the hedonism and cruelty of the Marquis de Sade. As an Atheist, I am not really on board with that belief. Facts are also not known to Sullivan if they disagree with a point he is attempting to get across; Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats being two of the most prominent victims. And for the investigation? The one that turns out to be one of the two major plot points in this book? (The other is a real nice doozy of one) The one that he met his “bodyguard” through, and the one that the stepmother’s victim has spent over 20 years on pursuing?
The remaining 146 pages is divided between the letter Sullivan was sent by apparently a “Higher Power” charging him personally with fighting the Devil, the four-month long exorcism he was fascinated by, the serial killers he reported on, how one of those serial killers was said to be “one of the holiest, purest of spirit men at the time of his execution that was ever on Earth”, how truly much the Spanish were justified in slaughtering the Aztec, and last but not least; being a one man example of a certain Political Party’s view on Mexico. I spent this part of the book expecting the phrase “bunch of very bad hombres” to show up. Sullivan holds that the Mexicans on the whole are divided into two parties; drug runners, and disturbed people who believe in “Black Magic”, “White Magic” and Devil worship. The overwhelming impression is that he believes Mexico a: has not evolved much from the human sacrifice and superstition of the Aztecs, b: of course worships the Devil as you’d have to throw them on their backs to get their shoes on their feet, and c: the residence of the Devil on Earth. His largest proof of the divine right of the Spaniards to slaughter the Aztecs? Because the Aztecs as I said committed human sacrifice to honor their gods, and who other than the Devil would demand someone to sacrifice someone to appease them?
The entire book comes across as Sullivan’s tinfoil hat ramblings about evil and its obsession with him and the Childress murder investigation which he injected himself into, with the scant history of the Devil as the flimsy hanger to place it all on.
The New York Times said this was a must-read and one of the scariest books ever written; all I have to say is:
