The Devil’s Guide to Managing Difficult People is an urban fantasy that deceptively starts off as a lighthearted take on a relationship with a supernatural being and eventually turns into a meditation on deeper explorations of a character’s pain, personality, choices, and mistakes. It tempts the reader with the fun and goofiness of its initial premise and gradually sucks the reader into a study of the main character and their history in a deep and sometimes painful dive. This latest book by Robin Bennis leverages and leavens Bennis’ droll sense of humor seen in the Signal Airship series and turns it onto a fantastic urban fantasy story.
Poor Jordan has a problem some of us are familiar with: making an acquaintanceship with someone that you should never have gotten to know, and now said person is stuck inside your life and you can’t get them out. They start to affect your work life, your love life, your friendships, and your well being. Jordan met Dee, and now Dee is omnipresent. Too omnipresent. Jordan can’t get rid of her no matter how hard she tries. Dee’s presence is chaotic, disruptive and, frankly, not good for Jordan, no matter what Dee claims. But Jordan’s problem is a bit bigger than that. You see, Dee is actually the Devil, and our protagonist learns that the Devil has plans for her. Big plans.
While having figures like the Devil in humorous sorts of roles is as old as Ambrose Bierce, I give credit to recent shows like The Good Place for giving the concept of the Devil as a force for evil and one that often leads to laughter and self reflection as well as the threat of malevolence. It is in that mindset and tradition that I came to Bennis’ book. Jordan is a relatively ordinary Bostonian with some rather strained relationships — with her friends, with her brother, with someone who she is kinda and kinda not dating, and, most drolly, with her soul-crushing job as a social worker. That last piece taps into workplace drudgery and comedy, a vein that works rather well when contrasted with the chaos that Dee brings into her life. This is some of the best stuff in the novel. Think of The Office or Office Space with a supernatural, demonic twist or the flashback scenes in The Good Place where we see Eleanor at work before she died.
The novel does well, too, in the cast of characters around Jordan and the predicament of having Dee in her life brings. David — or Agent Dave, as he is often called — is the erstwhile love interest of Jordan. Thanks to Dee, Jordan’s hopes and fears for a relationship with David are put under strain as the novel progresses. Jordan’s friends, Michael and Gabby, provide a sense of ballast and emotional support for Jordan — sometimes, when she doesn’t particularly want it. They are the kind of friends you met years ago and have become a permanent part of your life. Ruth is the boss from hell that provides a lot of drama in Jordan’s life, even more so when Dee starts messing with her life and straining the already fraught relationship with her superior. There are some other more minor characters who round out the plot, most notably Father Cunningham, to whom Jordan seeks spiritual advice when Dee’s presence really starts to press on Jordan.
And then there is Dee herself. Dee is a force of chaos. At first, that is all we see her as — more Loki than Lucifer. The malevolent part of her nature, and the inescapable truth that she is a force of evil in her own right, ramps up as the novel gets its legs under it. We slowly start to realize, along with Jordan, just what the Devil is up to. I did wonder for a while if the novel was really Dee’s story, and, as such, an apologia for the devil. That is not the path the author ultimately chose to take. Jordan’s life is rather messy from the get go: her relationships and her work environment alike are fraught with social landmines. Having the Devil in her life just ramps that up and causes some of those mines to explode. Just what the Devil does want from Jordan is not entirely clear; the reader is as much in the dark as Jordan.
There aren’t the action beats here that one finds in the Signal Airship novels; this is a novel for those people who enjoyed the character beats and interactions in that pair of novels and wanted more contemporary characters under Bennis’ pen. Jordan, her circle of friends and acquaintances, and Dee herself as the genderflipped devil all come to life in Bennis’ writing. Aside from the supernatural element of Dee, Jordan, David, Gabby and the rest are characters that feel and come across as people you might know or run into. The sensibility of the characters, as noted above, reminds me of the characters in The Good Place. They have personality, heart, and flaws; the characterization is slowly revelatory, and we get to learn more about Jordan, how Dee operates, and the people around them in an organic and natural way.
As the novel progresses toward the final quarter, though, it takes a darker and more serious turn, and some very painful truths about Jordan’s history come to light. We find out that Jordan has done some rather callous and horrible things in her past, which only reinforced in my mind the comparisons to The Good Place. I must say, though, that Jordan comes to recognize her flaws more slowly than Eleanor does. And she winds up paying the ultimate price, and frankly, winds up in Hell. I don’t think this gear shift of the novel entirely works as well as planned. What had been a relatively lighthearted story goes in a direction I was not entirely expecting, and I am not sure that shift entirely works. There is humor to be found in the last portion of the novel, mind you, but I think needed a little more on that dial, especially once all the cards are on the table as to how and what has happened and why the Devil has picked Jordan as a life to run rampant in.
The Devil’s Guide is droll, funny, and, at turns, painfully true. Sometimes that pain is rather uncomfortable, and I think the earlier portions of the novel are the strongest and most on point, even if the chase sequence in the back portion of the book was rather amusing. Still, The Devil’s Guide to Managing Difficult People entertained me throughout.
The Devil’s Guide to Managing Difficult People was released in May 2019. It is available where all good books are sold.
