The Devil Takes You Home

A Novel

By: Gabino Iglesias

Narrated by: Jean-Marc Berne

From an award-winning author comes a genre-defying thriller about a father desperate to salvage what's left of his family—even if it means a descent into violence.

Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.

The Devil Takes You Home is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby’s southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Critic reviews

One of Harper’s Bazaar's Best, Buzziest New Books of 2022
One of Crimereads 16 Horror Novels to Look Out For This Year

"Some nightmares you wake from just leave you in an even worse nightmare. And then Gabino Iglesias holds his hand out from that darkness, takes you home."—Stephen Graham Jones, author of THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS

"Pure noir, overflowing with the rage and sorrow of our times, The Devil Takes You Home is brutal, hallucinatory, and somehow, beautiful. This novel confirms what some of us already knew: Gabino Iglesias is a fierce, vital voice."
—Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of SURVIVOR SONG

"The Devil Takes You Home begins with pain. Like life, it starts with tears. It ends with transcendence. In between we are treated to some of the finest, most terrifying and heartbreaking writing you will read this year. Gabino Iglesias is like one of the old baroque masters, painting hyper-realistic images directly into your brain. Images that will make you cry, make you gasp, and make you see the world in a new light. The Devil Takes You Home is not to be missed.”
—S.A. Cosby, New York Times-bestselling author of RAZORBLADE TEARS and BLACKTOP WASTELAND

“The Devil Takes You Home is carried by a voice and rhythm, shaving sharp and wholly indelible. Iglesias never fails to keep a masterful foot on the pedal, feathering off the gas at times only to inevitably press it to the floor and pin us to our seats.”—David Joy, author of WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN

“Strap yourself in for this astonishing novel and its hallucinogenic mixture of crime and horror. Unforgettable characters, a pulse-pounding story, and a few scenes that will haunt you until the end of your days. Not since Denis Johnson’s Angels have we seen desperate characters like this, not to mention incandescent prose that is relentlessly brave, urgent, and honest. A page-turner with attitude…don’t miss it.”

—David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Anthony and Thriller Award-winning author of Winter Counts

“A grim rumination on the vacuum of loss, and who we become when we try to fill those gaps. Here there be bloodshed, oh yes, sudden lyrical frenzies peppers over the main course of calamity. Every time you think the book got quiet, it screams again. And note: you’ll never look at bolt cutters or crocodiles the same way again.”—Josh Malerman, New York Times-bestselling author of Bird Box and Daphne

Great book

Loved it . Awesome narrator, storyline and characters. Kept me hooked the entire time and I’ll look for more from this author

thriller with a dash of the occult

This was a slow burn thriller. we start off with a lot of emotional trauma experiencing the death of our MCS little girl, and the the solution of his marriage. through the grief a finds purpose in violence. that violence leads to a heist that is supposed to be the last till ever need to do. it also happens to me full of twists and surprises that You Don't see coming. getting through Mario's grief and dealing with his depressive thoughts dragged at times, but once the heist begins you won't believe how quick the action and the intensity ramp up. I really enjoyed this book and after reading the final twist at the end I kept coming back to think about all these little things throughout the book that I missed before that could have led me to knowing what was going on. really enjoyable really spooky.

Brilliant Beautiful and Horrifying

Gabino Iglesias tell a story through the main character that we don’t often see, or I should say, don’t want to see. This story is intense, grotesque, beautiful, and disturbing in the way it takes the reader inside two different worlds. One world is easy to disguise as being “just fine”, the other a world is a deep dive into Hell. There are very disturbing supernatural elements to this story and some magical realism making Iglesias is on his way to becoming the literary Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The usage of Spanish throughout the story lends to an authentic quality and is emblematic of the story if you don’t speak Spanish. I highly recommend this story to anyone, although a warning, you must be up to it and prepared for Odyssey like no other.

Every great hero dies.

The very rare great book. What more does one have to say. Obviously three more words.

Gruesome and timely

Monsters are everywhere. Through hard-hitting twists and turns that grab our hearts and minds along the way, we lose ourselves in a tale of grief and the grind of life in a messed-up world full of toxicity. I only understood whatever Spanish I remembered from HS but liked those interjections, which added to the whole atmosphere of the story by immersing us in the world. Mario is relatable as he narrates us through his darkness. Cool story, well told! Thank you for this book!