The Devil Raises His Own

July 1, 2024
The seamy side of silent pictures. After killing her abusive husband in self-defense, Flavia Purcell leaves Wichita to stay with her grandfather, photographer Bill Ogden, in Los Angeles. In 1916, the Hollywood studios have yet to establish themselves, and filmmaking is a dog-eat-dog world. Clyde Grady, who's graduated from one-reel comedies to stag films, joins forces with Irene Buntnagel, of the West Coast Art Company, and her husband, George Kaplan, of the film company Provident, whose sex film starring streetwalkers Trudy Crombie and Victoria Tessart encourages him to propose a series of "queer stuff." The X-rated films produced by Magnificat Educational Distribution Company, Incorporated, are so successful despite flouting the laws of the Postal Service that they provide the thread that (barely) holds together several far-reaching subplots. Small-time criminal Ezra Crombie, Trudy's long-estranged husband, turns up determined to make a go of it with her. Henry Seghers, who meets Ezra aboard a freight train the two of them have hopped, becomes Bill's assistant and falls in love with Flavia. Tommy Gill, a vaudeville star whose career in film comedies is on a steep decline, finds himself co-starring with Trudy's two children by Ezra, who punch and humiliate him onscreen to universal laughter. Postal inspector Melvin van de Kamp switches from patronizing the workers in a local brothel to watching the latest blue movies the madam sets up for him. The city grows sharply divided over the question of whether the U.S. should enter the Great War. The roster of hangers-on is obviously headed for a day of reckoning, but when it finally arrives in a series of violent confrontations, it can't help seeming anticlimactic. Less compelling as a story than as a richly teeming historical canvas.

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Starred review from July 15, 2024
For this raucous sequel set 38 years after the events of Hop Alley, Phillips sets his sights on the early days of the pornographic film industry. In 1916 Hollywood, septuagenarian photographer Bill Ogden runs a successful portrait studio with his granddaughter, Flavia, who’s come to California from Wichita, Kans., after killing her abusive husband. Recently, Bill has photographed some people who work for Clyde Grady, a director of “blue movies” that have begun to enter the marketplace being carved out by L.A.’s nascent film industry. Several colorful characters orbit the main cast, including Clyde’s producers, George and Irene Buntnagel, who are joined in a lavender marriage; Trudy Crombie, a single mother who’s turned to porn to support her family; and Tommy Gill, a drunken, fading comedian who casts Trudy’s two young children in a series of attempted comeback films. In rich, vividly realized vignettes, Phillips follows each cast member as a series of brutal murders sets the City of Angels on edge, leading Bill and Flavia to question their involvement in the sex industry. Phillips brilliantly marries cheeky comedy and noirish grit, taking the series in a wholly unexpected direction. James Ellroy fans will be thrilled. Agent: Noah Ballard, Verve Talent & Literary.

August 1, 2024
There is so much to love about this new novel by Phillips, the author of noir novels The Ice Harvest (2000) and Hop Alley (2014). The Devil Raises His Own, a follow-up to his previous books, including Hop Alley and Cottonwood (2004), is set in the early 1900s in Los Angeles. The movie industry is in its infancy, and photographer Bill Ogden, relocated from Kansas, figures running a portrait studio might get him some attention from Hollywood. Well, plans have a way of changing all by themselves, and soon Bill is amateur-sleuthing himself into danger after a killer turns L.A. into a slaughterhouse. Bill and his granddaughter, Flavia, are a pair of absolutely wonderful characters, and Phillips does such a fine job of evoking early-Hollywood L.A. that we really feel like we're visiting the place. Noir fans will be in seventh heaven, fans of novels about the early days of Hollywood will swoon, and readers who enjoy a good, solid, satisfying mystery will be delighted.

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Starred review from August 2, 2024

In The Ice Harvest, Phillips showed he was a whiz at blending action and comedy in one unputdownable package. With this book, he succeeds brilliantly again. It's 1916 and the movie industry is just building up steam when Bill Ogden opens his photography studio in seamy downtown Hollywood. His granddaughter is with him, having fled Kansas after braining her husband with a baseball bat. (He threatened to shoot her.) Lowlifes, grifters and movie wannabes surround them in a this-way/that-way string of botched adventures. A director aspires to greatness but settles for shooting sex flicks. His star, initially repulsed by appearing in a woman-on-woman film, orgasms on camera and soon wants to do more films. Her long-missing husband is now hunting her, and he discovers that homicide is an easy way to feather his nest. What'll happen when he finds her? Complications pile up in a plot that has more zigs and zags than Tristram Shandy. The story seems to go off the rails from time to time but doesn't really. It all comes together in a slam-bang ending. VERDICT A knockout comedy of manners about sex, violence, and making blue movies in early 20th-century La La Land.--David Keymer

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