I Shot the Devil: Evil lurks in pitch-black thriller from an Irish/Australian author

Dublin-born Ruth McIver’s bleak and darkly humorous crime novel won Australia’s Richell Prize for emerging writers in 2018 and has just been published here

Ruth McIvor’s novel, I Shot the Devil, is tense and taut, taking the reader on a blood and alcohol-soaked trek from Long Island to the Florida swamps with a plot as twisty and dark as a midnight rollercoaster.

FICTION

I Shot the Devil

By Ruth McIver

Tinder Press, €20.25

In 1994, two teenagers were killed in the woods at Southport on New York’s Long Island. One was bludgeoned to death by his peers in an alleged Satanic ritual, while the supposed ringleader was subsequently shot in self-defence by an off-duty policeman called to the scene.

Sixteen years later, Erin Sloane is an investigative reporter commissioned to write a feature on the event. “Eerie” ...