num_pages: 368
description: Grayson Hale the most infamous murderer in Scotland is better known by a different name: the Devils Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart claiming the Devil made him do it. When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question thats haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic or had he been telling the truth all along? Unnervingly Hale doesnt fit the bill of a killer. The first-person narrative that centers this novel reveals an acerbic young atheist newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger but has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear Graysons world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that hes working for the one he has feared all this timeand that the book is only the beginning of their partnership. A History of Fear is a propulsive foray into the darkness of the human psyche marrying dread-inducing atmosphere and heart-palpitating storytelling.An eerie literary suspense debut following the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student whos been nicknamed the Devils Advocate for his sensational crime: murdering a classmate then claiming the Devil made him do it.
language: English
title: A History of Fear
publisher: Atria Books