Scribd has been handy for discovering new books, and finding [easyazon_link identifier=”0446618705″ locale=”US” tag=”warloc-20″]The Devil You Know[/easyazon_link] by Mike Carey was a real winner.

I’m pretty sure I discovered it by doing a search for Michael Kramer, one of my favorite narrators, and he’s an excellent reader for this book. As an added bonus, since the main character, Felix Castor is British, you get to hear Kramer do lots of fun accents. He’s not at all bad for an American, although I did hear a few small goofs, mostly words not quite pronounced the way a Brit would, but nothing that detracted from my enjoyment.

The premise of the book is that ghosts are real, and, in the last few years, have become more active, to the point that people have mostly accepted their existence. Not everyone can see them, but enough have that national governments have even debated updating laws to acknowledge the rights of the deceased.

Felix Castor is an exorcist, and he made a pretty good living at it until two years earlier when he had an experience which made him question his vocation. A local museum has been having ghost troubles, and he gets sucked into helping them.

What starts out as a simple exorcism turns into something more complicated when he receives the message that pursuing it will lead to his death.

I loved the premise that ghosts, zombies and certain other creatures exist. I won’t spoil the nature of loup-garous, but suffice it to say that it was cooly awful and I didn’t see it coming. The very end was also more than a bit of a shocker, though as a good twist ending should be, completely obvious in hindsight.

The story dragged a tiny bit, and I think Carey could have tightened it up by a few thousand words without harming the plot, but it wasn’t enough to make me lose interest. Kramer is an excellent narrator, and he brought all the characters to life for me. I’ve already started listening to the second book in the series. I plan to finish all of them (five as of now), assuming the quality stays at least as good as the first one.