The Devil's Best Trick

Part true crime story, part historical account, partreligious and literary analysis, an investigation into how humankind hasidentified and confronted evil through the figure of the Devil from acclaimedjournalist Randall Sullivan

Howwe explain the evils of the world – and the darkest parts of ourselves – haspreoccupied humans throughout history. Asweeping and comprehensive search for the origins of belief in a Satanic figureacross the centuries, The Devil’s Best Trick is a keeninvestigation into the inescapable reality of evil and the myriad ways weattempt to understand it. Instructive, riveting, and unnerving, this isa profound rumination on crime, violence, and the darkness in all of us. 

In TheDevil’s Best Trick, Randall Sullivan travels to Catemaco, Mexico, toparticipate in the “Hour of the Witches” -- an annual ceremony in whichhundreds of people congregate in the jungle south of Vera Cruz to negotiateterms with El Diablo. He takes us through the most famous and best-documentedexorcism in American history, which lasted four months. And, woven throughout,he delivers original reporting on the shocking story of a small town in Texasthat, one summer in 1988, unraveled into paranoia and panic after aseventeen-year-old boy was found hanging from the branch of a horse apple treeand rumors about Satanic worship and cults spread throughout the widercommunity. 

Sullivanalso brilliantly melds historical, religious, and cultural conceptions of evil:from the Book of Job to the New Testament to the witch hunts in Europe in the15th through 17th centuries to the history ofthe devil-worshipping “Black Mass” ceremony and its depictions in 19th-century French literature. He brings us through to the “Satanic Panic” of the1980s and the story of one brutal serial killer, pondering the psychology ofevil. He weaves in writings by John Milton, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, EdgarAllan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and many more,among them Charles Baudelaire, from whose work Sullivan took the title of thebook.

Nimble and expertly researched, The Devil’s Best Trick is a meld ofthe historical breadth of preeminent historians Elaine Pagels and KarenArmstrong and the true-crime propulsion of Patrick Radden Keefe and MichelleMcNamara. Randall Sullivan, whose reportage and narrative skill has been called“extraordinary” and “enthralling” by Rolling Stone, takes on abold task in this book -- essentially crafting, from over a decade of research,a biography of the Devil.