Book Review: MARK OF THE DEMON

From The Baton Rouge Advocate

MARK OF THE DEMON
By Diana Rowland
Bantam, $23 paperback

At first this book seems to have an identity problem: it reads like a romance, but there is some fantasy stuff with demons but then it’s a crime thriller with a cop chasing a serial killer. Somehow Rowland manages to tie it all together, but the knots are not all neat.
The cop, Kara Gillian, works for the “Beaulac Police Department” in a small city near New Orleans in “St. Long Parish.”

“A small, quiet parish with the city of Beaulac as its hub, it boasted only a few murders a year and not much other crime except for the usual mix of drug abuse and burglaries.” That quiet is shattered by a serial murderer called the Symbol Man. He is called that because he carves arcane symbols into the flesh of his victims. Gillian recognizes the nature of the symbol because she herself is a “summoner” who calls up demons in her spare time. The Symbol Man had been active years before, then went quiet only to start up again just after Gillian is promoted to detective.

Gillian knows a lot about demons, but she is still a novice summoner, and when she tries to call up a particular demon, something goes badly wrong. The being who comes into her basement (Rowland explains the rarity of basements in Louisiana) is not the creature she called. He’s a demon lord, and he is very powerful and very angry. Yet he calms down when he sees Gillian, and she reacts by having a steamy sexual encounter with him. Gillian is always complaining about how plain she looks and how she never gets any action. The demon is definitely action. Then there is the FBI agent with the pretty eyes who comes to help find the serial killer.

The best of the plot lines is the serial killer chase. Yet it is dependent on the arcane complications. The demon sex and romantic interests are just extras.

Somehow it all seems to work and provides a compelling story line by the time you get toward the end of the book. The local color is pretty good and pretty accurate (basement aside), as you would expect from Rowland since she is from south Louisiana. Her characters are strong, Gillian the most complex and nuanced, but her bad guys are deliciously bad and her demons, if unbelievable, are plenty scary.