Before any comparisons are made to the 2018 series Bodyguard, it's worth noting that the 1992 film The Bodyguard has a similar premise.
And that movie was actually written in the seventies, as a role for Steve McQueen. This basic story structure - bodyguard initially dislikes principal, reluctantly falls for her, and also kills a bunch of bad guys - can probably be found on cave paintings. But I doubt it's ever been executed as well as it is in The Devils You Know.
Vincent is a former Navy Seal who served in Iraq - now he's in California, a flip-flop wearing bodyguard for a supermarket tycoon, with no interest in ever touching a gun again. He expects to spend most of his time surfing, and the rest of it writing a screenplay. (When in LA, right?) But the tycoon's daughter, Erin, is a headline-grabbing conservative pundit, and soon she needs protecting from a hit squad. Vincent finds himself needing his old skills, breaking his new codes, and reluctantly becoming the man he used to be.
The story is ultra-modern on a superficial level. The characters use smartphones, and chat about 9/11, Antifa and "the intellectual dark web". But under the hood, a vintage motor is roaring. An ex-military tough guy who just wants the quiet life, a classy dame who needs protecting, a hitman who likes to muse about the human condition before he pulls the trigger, the smell of cordite after every gunfight - this book wouldn't be out of place on bestseller lists any time in the last eight decades. But that's not to say that the plot doesn't throw some terrific curveballs.
The Devils You Know is written with the flair of James Elroy or Elmore Leonard - or perhaps Quentin Tarantino. Every sentence is scrubbed to a mirror sheen. (I just opened to a random page: "All day, she'd managed to keep it to one side—emotional periphery—but now it was right here, and she felt this strange temptation just to give up, sink into the feeling that everything was terrible, irreparable. And in her head the undamaged world—a counter-world—was playing out, and they had gone to dinner like she'd said in her note to him, and the real world seemed built on such surreal and morbid chance it was absurd she was even here.")
It would be unfair to describe The Devils You Know as "style over substance." The style IS the substance. Sanders knows the perfect word for everything, which makes even the non-fight scenes a joy to read. Those non-fight scenes are rare, though. From the bone-crunching punch-up on page 14 to the bloody shootout in the remote house, action fans will have a blast. Just to give some idea of how this book rolls, almost everyone introduced in chapter 1 is dead by the end of chapter 11.
The linguistic flair helps the reader overlook the parts that don't withstand much scrutiny. Vincent, for example, ultimately seduces Erin by heckling her from the crowd during a TV appearance. That doesn't make sense on either a plot or character level, but it's very cool, and cool is Sanders' main concern. (Which isn't to say there aren't hidden depths here. Vincent's political disagreements with Erin are unexpectedly nuanced, though they may start to feel repetitive for some readers.) The narrator of the audiobook, Chris Coucouvinas, also deserves a shout-out. He makes the most of the already gleaming dialogue, with a mixture of laid-back, macho and vulnerable voices that the reader can't help but lean into.
If you like the hard-boiled genre, Sanders might be the best living writer of it - you'll love The Devils You Know. As with The Stakes and American Blood before it, I couldn't put it down, and didn't want it to end.
Jack Heath is the author of Hideout.
Vincent is a former Navy Seal who served in Iraq - now he's in California, a flip-flop wearing bodyguard for a supermarket tycoon, with no interest in ever touching a gun again. He expects to spend most of his time surfing, and the rest of it writing a screenplay. (When in LA, right?) But the tycoon's daughter, Erin, is a headline-grabbing conservative pundit, and soon she needs protecting from a hit squad. Vincent finds himself needing his old skills, breaking his new codes, and reluctantly becoming the man he used to be.
The story is ultra-modern on a superficial level. The characters use smartphones, and chat about 9/11, Antifa and "the intellectual dark web". But under the hood, a vintage motor is roaring. An ex-military tough guy who just wants the quiet life, a classy dame who needs protecting, a hitman who likes to muse about the human condition before he pulls the trigger, the smell of cordite after every gunfight - this book wouldn't be out of place on bestseller lists any time in the last eight decades. But that's not to say that the plot doesn't throw some terrific curveballs.
The Devils You Know is written with the flair of James Elroy or Elmore Leonard - or perhaps Quentin Tarantino. Every sentence is scrubbed to a mirror sheen. (I just opened to a random page: "All day, she'd managed to keep it to one side—emotional periphery—but now it was right here, and she felt this strange temptation just to give up, sink into the feeling that everything was terrible, irreparable. And in her head the undamaged world—a counter-world—was playing out, and they had gone to dinner like she'd said in her note to him, and the real world seemed built on such surreal and morbid chance it was absurd she was even here.")
It would be unfair to describe The Devils You Know as "style over substance." The style IS the substance. Sanders knows the perfect word for everything, which makes even the non-fight scenes a joy to read. Those non-fight scenes are rare, though. From the bone-crunching punch-up on page 14 to the bloody shootout in the remote house, action fans will have a blast. Just to give some idea of how this book rolls, almost everyone introduced in chapter 1 is dead by the end of chapter 11.
The linguistic flair helps the reader overlook the parts that don't withstand much scrutiny. Vincent, for example, ultimately seduces Erin by heckling her from the crowd during a TV appearance. That doesn't make sense on either a plot or character level, but it's very cool, and cool is Sanders' main concern. (Which isn't to say there aren't hidden depths here. Vincent's political disagreements with Erin are unexpectedly nuanced, though they may start to feel repetitive for some readers.) The narrator of the audiobook, Chris Coucouvinas, also deserves a shout-out. He makes the most of the already gleaming dialogue, with a mixture of laid-back, macho and vulnerable voices that the reader can't help but lean into.
If you like the hard-boiled genre, Sanders might be the best living writer of it - you'll love The Devils You Know. As with The Stakes and American Blood before it, I couldn't put it down, and didn't want it to end.
Jack Heath is the author of Hideout.
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