Sympathy for the Devil: An Angela Bivens Thriller

by Christopher Chambers

Be careful what you wish for . . .
FBI Special Agent Angela Bivens has just won a hard-fought racial and sex discrimination lawsuit against the Bureau. She should be euphoric -- all she ever wanted to be was a field agent. But the women she filed the suit with have fled the Bureau, leaving Angela alone to deal with her cynical, ultrapolitical superiors. They throw her a bone by sending her to help the befuddled and apathetic D.C. police solve two seemingly unrelated cases -- the brutal murder of two teenage girls and the macabre, ritualized executions of rival drug dealers.

The cops see the victims as routine casualties of a drug war, but Angela begins to uncover a far more extensive network of horrors. The threads seem to lead right from the case files into her personal life and her hot, burgeoning love affair with Trey Williams, a well-connected D.C. lawyer, scion of an elite family, or, as her girlfriends call him, the "black JFK Jr." Although Trey is everything a woman could want, he is also shackled with a heroin-addicted twin brother nicknamed Pluto who is obsessed with myths and the occult and is fast becoming Angela's prime suspect in this wave of shocking murders.

After she saves the life of a fellow officer in a shoot-out, Angela becomes the FBI's golden girl, a media-anointed local hero. But is the FBI setting her up for an even bigger fall? She can't trust her superiors. She can't trust her boyfriend. Faced with the hard facts and following her gut instincts, Angela feels that she has no choice but to solve these cases and avenge the innocent victims on her own.

Played out against a vivid and realistic portrait of Washington -- from the halls of Congress and swank gathering places of the city's African American elite to the gritty, mournful streets where gang warfare remains a fact of life --

Sympathy for the Devil introduces a remarkable new crime-fighting heroine whose struggle to reconcile the pulls of love and duty, ambition and self-doubt makes this an utterly compelling thriller. Fans of Grace Edwards and Valerie Wilson Wesley, whose stories feature strong African American women, and all readers looking for a riveting page-turner in the style of Patricia Cornwell or Thomas Harris will welcome this impressive debut novel from Christopher Chambers.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2001

About the author

Christopher Chambers is a crime novelist, professor of media studies, lawyer, and International Fellow at International Conflict Resolution Center. His works include the first two installment in the Dickie Cornish mystery series, Scavenger and Standalone (Three Rooms Press); two Penguin Random House releases: A Prayer for Deliverance and Sympathy for the Devil (NAACP Image Award nominee); the graphic anthology (with Gary Phillips) The Darker Mask (Tor Books); the PEN/Malamud-nominated story “Leviathan” and "The Psalm of Bo"; and more. Chambers is a regular commentator and contributor on media and culture issues on SiriusXM Radio, ABC News, and HuffPost. He resides in his hometown of Washington, D.C. with his family and German Shepherd, Max.

Reviews

[Carolyn Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could say that this book was a page turner, but it wasn’t. The formula was pretty standard and there was nothing particularly interesting about the characters to make them stand out in my mind. Just ok.

[Victor Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm into this first novel he's done late (2018 I bought it 17 years after publishing) because of the Faking of the President and Obama Inheritance anthologies (which won awards and New York Times ) I came away wondering why this wasn't bought for HBO's True Detective back in the day. My wife was in a book club in the 2003 and heard that Angela Bassett and Courtney Vance had optioned it but it appears nothing became of that. For a freshmen effort with a supposedly respected, astute black female FBI protagonist, stomped on by colleagues and even her mentors--back then this was a trailblazer! So many copies of this premise since then. Indeed I liked the antagonist NOT being the "man" or "the system," but human evil and depravity. Typically a novel centered around an African American protagonist have the racist system as co-equal or worse than the human monsters who lurk out there so this was a surprise that is also now well-copied. It was the very end that scared me the most however: utterly original then and now.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. While it isn't doing anything new in terms of plot, the character development more than makes up for it. Very well written and the action scenes were great! I hope there are more by this author, I'm going to check Amazon.com now.