The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape

"Roberts's superb third whodunit featuring Stephen Robbins (after My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black) finds the PI investigating the mysterious death of a college girl at the hotel where he used to work. In 1924, Robbins, 44, has retired from detective work and is living as a recluse after his wife died in childbirth. He’s drawn out of his shell when Benjamin Loftis, current owner of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C.- a swanky hotel that Robbins once managed– asks Robbins to help solve a murder: 20-something college student Rosalind Caldwell was found, naked and shot twice, in an expensive Grove Park room where she wasn’t staying. With the sheriff’s inquiry stalled two weeks after the killing, Loftis fears continued damage to his business if things aren’t resolved quickly. Robbins agrees to help, but finds out, once he starts poking around, Asheville’s elites are working very hard to throw him off their scent. Roberts matches evocative historical detail and genuinely surprising twists with top-shelf character work, cementing Robbins’s spot in the troubled PI hall of fame. Fans of Ray Celestin’s City Blues Quartet will adore this." -Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"The third Robbins novel rings all the bells of its hard-boiled genre: a quick read with snappy repartee, predictable action scenes, and a snarky stream of internal dialog…[that] would appeal to stalwart admirers of the 'tough guy with a philosopher’s soul' trope.” —Booklist

“If Hercule Poirot had been born in Appalachia instead of in Belgium, he would be Stephen Robbins.” —Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and This Isn’t Going to End Well

"Gripping and gorgeous... Those who dive into this deliciously crafted mystery will find themselves submerged in such evocative mood and detail that they will not want to come up for air. With this latest installment in the Stephen Robbins Chronicles, Terry Roberts cements himself as the master of Appalachian noir.” —Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City

“Terry Roberts has crafted another classic noir mystery rich with sensory details, brisk pacing, crackling dialogue, and escalating tension. I tore through the pages of this newest Stephen Robbins novel, completely immersed in the atmospheric details of Jazz Age-Asheville as our hero investigates a murder at the Grove Park Inn. Robbins faces his biggest challenge yet, especially when wealthy society leaders are more interested in wrapping up the case than finding real answers. The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape swept me along so powerfully that I became just as desperate as Robbins to see justice prevail.” —Heather Bell Adams, author of Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone

“Terry Roberts delivers with another novel about hard-boiled detective Stephen Robbins. You’ll be enthralled as Robbins uncovers a killer, and left thinking as the novel explores privilege, power, corruption, racism, and the cost of redemption. The historical setting may be illustrious, but everyone’s morals are in question.” —Leslie Logemann, Highland Books, Brevard, NC

“'Just how fond of you am I?' is an enticing question that helps launch Terry Roberts’ red-hot new novel, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape. And what does a 10-gauge shotgun have to do with prostitution in 1920s Asheville, North Carolina—at the Grove Park Inn, no less? And how much does Roberts’ depiction of elite family control of towns and counties in the 1920s differ from the same phenom a century later? Not at all. If you want a needle-threading, button-popping literary crime novel tha