(The Dunwich Hoarder - Terry L. Estep - Image generated with the aid of ChatGPT)

“Better the Devil,” by Erik J. Brown. Publication date: Jan. 20. 398 pages.

Erik J. Brown offers up a YA novel full of murder and deceit.

A gay teen from West Virginia runs away from home when his religious parents try to force him into a conversion camp. He spends eight months wandering and homeless before being arrested for shoplifting a can of Chef Boyardee.

To avoid being identified and returned to his parents, he claims to be a missing boy named Nate — a boy he superficially resembles–whose picture he sees on a flyer.

It soon turns out faking amnesia about your missing years as an abductee is harder than it looks, especially when you’re lying to people who’ve been consumed with grief for years … and may be the prime suspects in their child’s disappearance. His only ally is the cute boy next door, a childhood friend of the real Nate, who now has a true crime podcast and wants to learn the truth about Nate’s abduction.

As “Nate” does his best to investigate while finding a way to fit in with his new parents and older brother, it becomes clear someone else knows his secret and is toying with him. Each incident adds a new layer of tension until the explosive finale.

You can feel the research throughout the book. You get the sense Brown asked multiple people about how the system would handle a minor in this situation so he could develop story workarounds to explain why that didn’t happen. Liberties were no doubt taken, but it gives it just enough plausibility to suspend disbelief.

The finale is where readers may roll their eyes and question some of the over-the-top choices, but it works.

Brown’s previous novels leaned more into the YA romance category, but here he shows he can stretch his talent into different genres. The novel tackles themes of guilt and redemption, found family and forgiveness, even as the bodies pile up.

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Here are a few short takes on some recent reads.

* “King Sorrow,” by Joe Hill. A decade passed between the publication of Hill’s last novel and “King Sorrow,” but it was worth the wait. A group of friends summon a dragon to help them take care of some very bad people, but it’s never pretty when such Faustian bargains come due. It’s a sprawling blend of fantasy and horror, a 900-page epic that manages to feel too short.

* “The Court of the Dead,” by Rick Riordan and Marc Oshiro. A spinoff of the Percy Jackson novels, this one follows longtime character Nico di Angelo and his boyfriend Will Solace as they try to ease tensions and solve a mystery at a rival camp where monsters have decided to stop being monsters. Lots of good lessons about acceptance and moving beyond prejudice in this one.

* “All the Sinners Bleed,” by S.A. Cosby. A black sheriff in a rural Virginia county discovers a series of abductions and murders and must rely on his FBI training to find the killer (or killers) involved and keep his town from tearing itself apart. Cosby is a master of crime fiction.

* “Gone South,” by Robert McCammon. A Vietnam veteran kills a bank loan manager in a moment of panicked self-defense and goes on the run into the Louisiana swamps. He’s being chased by an unlikely pair of bounty hunters (one of them is an Elvis impersonator). It was fun and tragic and completely unhinged.

* “Appaloosa,” by Robert B. Parker. The first novel in a series of westerns. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are the lawmen you hire when you need to tame a town and Matt Dillon isn’t around to do it the nice way.

Terry Estep can be reached at testep@newsandsentinel.com