By Melissa Ingells, WKAR News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-974810.mp3
EAST LANSING, MI – Book reviewer Lev Raphael has some thrilling summer reading to pass along, about a mad, bad, dangerous-to-know ghost who starts appearing to an American boy at a British boarding school. He spoke with Melissa Ingells about Justin Evans' book, "The White Devil."
AUDIO:
LEV RAPHAEL: The title of this great summer thriller, The White Devil, refers to a play by John Webster, a Jacobean revenge dramatist, and the book is filled with revenge of all kinds.
This has to be the best thriller I've read all year, and maybe in the last couple of years. And it's about a kid who has screwed up so bad that his rich father gets him out of the country. He sends him to a private school in England, Harrow, and he tells him, "You make good at this school or you're out. I kick you out. I write you out of the will. It is over for you." So, he's got a bit of pressure on him.
MELISSA INGELLS: Yeah, no pressure at all.
RAPHAEL: Right. And when he gets there, he meets a ghost. Now, Harrow is 400 years old, so you might expect some ghosts there. You might not expect them to haunt Americans. But what is special about this American is that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Byron.
INGELLS: THAT Byron?
RAPHAEL: Yes, Lord Byron, who attended Harrow. And the book is structured around his trying to figure out what happened involving Byron at the school that is ever-present in his life and is threatening him and all the people around him. It is one of those books that you cannot stop reading except to say, "Wow!"
INGELLS: I have to admit that when you told me this was the book you were doing, kind of my first impression was, "Boarding school book." Hasn't that been done and redone and redone?
RAPHAEL: It has. And you might think that you'd be bored or you'd read it before. But the combination of the beautiful writing, the great point of view, the cultural conflict between Americans and the English makes this really stand out. Plus, it's not one of your write-by-numbers, totally predictable thrillers. You can't see what's coming and it is really an intelligent reader's thriller. It's the only book I've ever read that combines ghosts, sex and homework. How can you beat it?