Dave-El's Book Report: Houses of the Unholy

As is my frequent want here in these posts of Dave-El's Book Report, I will extoll the talents of writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips with their series of graphic novels.  

Brubaker and Phillips have carved a successful niche noir crime novels that are engaging and challenging.

I am almost a broken record about how much I enjoy their output.

But today's post....?

Well...

Houses of the Unholy may well be a rare misstep in the Brubaker/Phillips bibliography.   

Natalie Burns is a young woman leading an aimless life, putting some cash in her pocket as a bounty hunter.  

She encounters FBI Agent West who seeks to draw her into his investigation into a sinister conspiracy involving a satanic cult. He's following a trail of dead bodies which are connected to Natalie. 

They were all people from her childhood and they were all caught up in a twist web of allegations involving satanic activities in their home town. 

Via flashbacks, we explore Natalie's childhood where she and some other kids attending a summer camp got caught up in the hysteria of grown ups who just knew the counselors were into some kind of devil worshipping shit. 

Brubaker is tapping into the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's where God fearing Americans just knew the Devil himself was literally lurking around every corner waiting to pounce.

There are charges, investigations, arrests and trials to root out the truth of this evil lurking ever so close to their precious children. 

The children are told to tell only the truth of what happened at the camp. 

The children also understand what salicious "truth" their parents want to hear. 

The whole thing blows up when under the cold light of day, there's clearing nothing there.

But not before the head counselor, her reputation destroyed, kills herself.

The guilt and grief over her role in this debacle as a child wrecked Natalie, akways on the move, avoiding connections with people, moving as far away as she can from those terrible days.

But now this FBI agent wants to pull her back in. 

Some of the kids from that time convinced themselves there really was a dark and terrible power in the haunted woods outside their summer camp. 

And as adults, they are determined to gain that power for themselves.

Well, it sounds like we got ourselves a real firecracker of a plot, don't we?

But do we have a story?

 People flit in and out of both the present and past narratives to service the plot but leave little impression. 

Agent West is little more than a plot device to get Natalie Burns into the plot.

About a quarter of the way near the end, we're informed Natalie has a brother who we did not know about before and is needed to help Natalie with the next step of her journey. 

His fatal fate at the hands of the satanic conspirators should've landed harder but hey, we just met the guy.  

I think that perhaps Houses of the Unholy may have been better served by a longer structure of being serialized as a comic book series, allowing more time to invest in the characters. Instead everything is compressed into a single graphic novel. 

The book still has flashes of the brilliance we expect from a Brubaker/Phillips production but I think Houses of the Unholy is not the best representation of their work. 

The next time I do a Book Report post, we will delve into the life and time of one Sir Patrick Stewart.