The Devil in Silver

NewHyde Hospital's psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, veryold one.

Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero(in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strappedmental institution in Queens, New York. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn'tseem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can't quite square with his memory.In the darkness of his room on his first night, he's visited by a terrifyingcreature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly killshim before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion: Theother patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goesdown. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, anoctogenarian schizophrenic who's been on the ward for decades and knows all itssecrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately tosend alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who actsas the group's enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, andtheir own minds, they try to kill the monster that's stalking them. But can theDevil die?

The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themesthat spark all of Victor LaValle's radiant fiction: faith, race, class,madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that,it's a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love,and the courage to slay our own demons.

VictorLaValle is the author of the short-story collection Slapboxing with Jesus andthe novel The Ecstatic, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

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