The Devil's Angel

If you want a guide to teenage mean streets then Kevin Brooks is your man. In this short novel, in Barrington Stoke dyslexia-friendly format, 15-year-old Jack traces his gradually souring fascination with charismatic, and border-line psychotic, Dean. We first meet Dean as he beats ‘the living shit’ out of the class bully during an art lesson. After this, for Jack, it’s deeper into Dean’s disturbing and compelling way of life: ‘too much, too fast, too loud and too wild.’ Until, after a drink and drug fuelled weekend, which ends with Dean bleeding from a stab wound in the toilet of a biker bar, Jack begins to look at the friendship more warily. Finally, as the pair’s rock band is possibly on the brink of success, Jack decides he’s had enough. Both this tough story and the manner of Jack’s telling – direct, urgent and reflective – suit the format. And there’s more here than excitement, danger and violence. If the sixteen short chapters come at you like rapid, expertly-aimed blows, you still have time enough to wonder about the source of Dean’s anger and bitterness, whether it was Jack or Dean that was most dependent on their relationship, and whether Dean could have changed for the better.