HELLCORP

RELEASED OUT NOW! 317 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Jonathan Whitelaw Publisher Urbane Publications

Hellcorp takes a leaf from a well-regarded 1934 fantasy film, Death Takes A Holiday, and its less-liked remake, Meet Joe Black. In both, Death takes on our form and slowly becomes humanised by a mortal woman. In Hellcorp, the Devil undergoes the same treatment, in what the book presents as less-than-gorgeous Glasgow. (The author’s Scottish, so he can get away with dissing the city – he’s even ruder about its prettified suburbs.)

The humour is broadly Tom Holt-ish, but with one unfortunate difference: it’s not much good. The jokes don’t land, and the central pairing between Him Downstairs and a human nurse called Jill is woefully charmless. This Devil is never really evil, he’s just detached from humanity until he gets a bit of a scolding – some Prince of Darkness! At times he comes off as an obnoxious Doctor Who. We’re told he’s magnetically compelling; really he’s just a potty-mouthed jerk whom you’d like to punch – not from moral outrage but from weary exasperation.

There’s also a stray story strand about the Devil’s plans to create a barely-described theme park of sin, the titular Hellcorp. Weirdly irrelevant, this feels like an offcut from an earlier draft; meanwhile, the main story looks like it was published many drafts too early. It doesn’t help that the “Devil turns human” idea was used more successfully in TV’s Lucifer.