The fabled Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, looms as the intriguing, dark backdrop for Terry Roberts’ novel The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape (Turner Publishing 10/01/2024). This excellent mystery is the third in the Stephen Robbins Chronicles series. Those familiar with Asheville and those who love mysteries won’t want to miss this engaging novel.
It’s 1924. A nameless man, a naked woman, and a pearl-handled derringer blast the story off to a fast start in the prologue. The murder would be less newsworthy if it had happened elsewhere in Asheville, but when blood is spilled in the Grove Park Inn, “the finest pile of rocks ever built,” the storied hotel’s reputation is at stake. The owner—Benjamin Loftis—sends an urgent S.O.S. to retired investigator Stephen Robbins. But Robbins isn’t interested. Since the death of his wife Lucy in childbirth, Robbins and his son Luke are living a quiet life thirty miles south of Asheville.
Refusing to accept “no” for an answer, Loftis orders his chauffeur to drive him unannounced to Robbins’ home. The staunchly upper class and pious Loftis begins to explain his inn’s goal is to offer those of similar social standing a place of “wholesome simplicity” to restore their energy. No alcohol in his establishment, he says. Unimpressed, Robbins cuts off Loftis’s spiel and asks bluntly, “Question is, Mr. Loftis, what has interrupted the flow of wholesome simplicity? Put another way: what the hell are you doing here?” Loftis wants “the murderer caught and punished.” From the outset, Robbins doubts the truth of that assertion—what if the murderer is someone rich or famous? His insight proves prescient. The prime suspects would be the elite townspeople who attended a reception the evening of the murder. Who else would have had access to the hotel’s expensive rooms? Loftis and the sheriff insist no one in the upper crust of society would be capable of this heinous crime. Robbins knows better. Still, he takes on the case.
Robbins is a worthy protagonist who is dogged in his pursuit of justice and loveable for his self-deprecation, like acknowledging he “must have looked and sounded like a convict recently released.”
The plot zips along with all the elements expected in a good mystery: an antagonist or two, an unexpected ally, a bit of romance, and several more murders—all wrapped up in delicious prose. Witness this description of the inn:
It felt as if the whole massive structure had stood long before time and human habitation, the puny beings come along only recently to honeycomb its interior with some rugs and lamps and bedsteads.
Even though I stood staring in the blare of morning sun, the thought occurred to me that this edifice was more a creation of night than of day, spun out of darkness more than light. It was itself shadowy, even when bathed by the sun.
And this seductive introduction of a woman:
She laughed, and it was the oddest sound. Something like faraway chimes in the wind.
Those lobby chairs were low, but she managed to fall gracefully into the one beside me as if she were water flowing, and the pool of lamplight around us was suddenly warmer, brighter.
Another admirable aspect of the novel is its examination of the rigid social structure of Asheville society and the occasional philosophical observation. Robbins may not be educated with the upper class, but he is wise:
. . . human existence was a fragile as an eggshell, as tenuous as a spiderweb. And what we did to each other was the worst of all. The hatred and the jealousy, the grasping and ambition—all of which led to such a tragic, foolish squandering of the scarce time we had.
Go ahead and read this one. Far from a foolish squandering of your scarce time, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape offers an entertaining escape to 1920s Asheville and the Grove Park Inn.
Terry Roberts
Terry Roberts is the author of five celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (Finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black (Finalist for the 2022 Best Paperback Original Novel by the International Thriller Writers Organization); and most recently, The Sky Club.
Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer. A native of the mountains of Western North Carolina, his ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife, Lynn.
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