Lazlo is an 800-year-old demon with a terrible work ethic, a movie star human ‘glamor’ and a wicked sense of humor. He’s selfish, lazy, snarky, maybe secretly kind of nice and in big trouble. His high-ranking, evil father is punishing Lazlo by making him work a thankless job in the devil’s bureaucratic offices. A Hell’s ‘“Hell,” if you will.
While Lazlo runs up thousands of dollars in expense tabs doing nothing; he is supposed to be supervising the curse of a particular family; the Drakefords.
The Drakeford Curse has been mutating the family with horrific outcomes since colonial times and Maggie, the current heir, is about to face ruin. Maggie is 19 and entering her darkest hours as a Drakeford. At the family compound in upstate New York, she is slowly transmogrifying.
The Witchstone is an, as yet, unidentified totem at the center of what will unfold between Lazlo and the younger Drakefords. Lazlo , Maggie and young George, known as Lump, travel from upstate to New York City and then Europe. Lazlo takes the Drakefords in search of a way to break the curse. Or does he? Since he also tells his boss he specifically isn’t doing that. Then he tells someone else he might be thinking about, maybe not thinking of, not doing that. Smarmy to the last, we should definitely not trust a demon but we sorta do.
Demons from many sides intervene to stop the trio as they travel from fancy Italian hotel to cursed demon empress’s castle to holy church and every hell hole in between. Neff’s cast of demonic characters is unrivaled. I don’t usually root immediately for a movie to erupt from a book but this would be so great visually. Some of these creepy crawlers on the subway or tunneling underneath Central Park just scream for an agent.
Best of all, the very end made me want a sequel—like a Bond flick with a forked tail.
About the author: Jen Petty Hilger grew up in New York and London, England, but finds herself happily quiet living by the water in Old Lyme. She and her husband have six children between them and a myriad of rescued animals.