Tristram St. Lawrence, 13th Earl of Howth, opted to go on a bender rather than attend his mother's funeral. Now, several years later, he is back--and not welcome in the castle. He takes a room at a hotel and runs into an old school bully, Desmond Hickey, who insists Tristram is dead. This is a recurring refrain in Claire Kilroy's The Devil I Know--just about all the novel's other characters believe Tristram died years before.
Tristram is a linguist, a world traveler who does business for and with many corporations and governments. His only real connection is his AA sponsor, M. Deauville--and they've never set eyes on each other. Meeting up with Hickey could be his undoing. "If adventure has a smell," Tristram thinks, sitting in a pub with Hickey, "if promise has a smell, if youth has a smell, it is that of beer in the sun." Tempting stuff, but he resists.
Hickey is more interested in Tristram's connections. Ireland is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom. Hickey and Tristram, with M. Deauville's blessing, start wheeling and dealing, buying and selling--and borrowing.
Then a bank goes under in New York, and suddenly, their assets are worthless. Though Tristram thought he was bulletproof because his father owned the assets pledged, his father dies the very night the bank collapses--leaving Tristram the proud owner of all the debt.
The Devil I Know is structured as a deposition, and Kilroy gives Tristram many moments of self-deprecation; he understands that what he is doing is not quite cricket, but is powerless to stop. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.