About the Book
2025 Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award nominee for the North Carolina Book Awards
Walk the dark halls and threatening streets of 1920s Asheville in this thrilling third installment of The Stephen Robbins Chronicles, as fan-favorite Robbins confronts the dangerous contrast between appearance and reality at the exclusive Grove Park Inn.
It's the autumn of 1924, and Benjamin Loftis has a problem. A college girl is discovered-naked and dead-in one of the finest rooms of his beloved Grove Park Inn. To protect the reputation of this jewel in the crown of North Carolina and all the Southern mountains, Loftis calls in Stephen Robbins, a local man famous in some circles for finding missing people and solving unsolvable crimes.
Robbins, now scarred and battered by life's wars, would rather retreat from the world than dive headfirst into a new mystery. But he agrees to help and is quickly swept into the social hierarchy of Asheville's complex and harshly stratified society, running head-on into the financial and political elite who control this mountain town-those who want a murderer caught but not necessarily the murderer.
With so many socialites focused on reputation over truth, will Robbins be able to find the devil walking among them and bring them to justice? Find out in The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, a thrilling noir set against the backdrop of the jazz age in America.
Want more Stephen Robbins? Read more of his story in
A Short Time to Stay Here and My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black.
About the Author :
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 BlackFinalist for the 2022 Best Paperback Original Novel by the International Thriller Writers Organization); and most recently,The Sky Club, released in July of 2022.
Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina-born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain story telling.
Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolinawith his wife, Lynn.
Review :
“Roberts’s superb third whodunit featuring Stephen Robbins (after My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black) finds the PI investigating the mysterious death of a college girl at the hotel where he used to work. In 1924, Robbins, 44, has retired from detective work and is living as a recluse after his wife died in childbirth. He’s drawn out of his shell when Benjamin Loftis, current owner of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C.– a swanky hotel that Robbins once managed– asks Robbins to help solve a murder: 20-something college student Rosalind Caldwell was found, naked and shot twice, in an expensive Grove Park room where she wasn’t staying. With the sheriff’s inquiry stalled two weeks after the killing, Loftis fears continued damage to his business if things aren’t resolved quickly. Robbins agrees to help, but finds out, once he starts poking around, Asheville’s elites are working very hard to throw him off their scent. Roberts matches evocative historical detail and genuinely surprising twists with top-shelf character work, cementing Robbins’s spot in the troubled PI hall of fame. Fans of Ray Celestin’s City Blues Quartet will adore this.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"The third Robbins novel rings all the bells of its hard-boiled genre: a quick read with snappy repartee, predictable action scenes, and a snarky stream of internal dialog…[that] would appeal to stalwart admirers of the 'tough guy with a philosopher’s soul' trope.” —Booklist
“If Hercule Poirot had been born in Appalachia instead of in Belgium, he would be Stephen Robbins.” —Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and This Isn’t Going to End Well
"Gripping and gorgeous... Those who dive into this deliciously crafted mystery will find themselves submerged in such evocative mood and detail that they will not want to come up for air. With this latest installment in the Stephen Robbins Chronicles, Terry Roberts cements himself as the master of Appalachian noir.” —Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City
“Terry Roberts has crafted another classic noir mystery rich with sensory details, brisk pacing, crackling dialogue, and escalating tension. I tore through the pages of this newest Stephen Robbins novel, completely immersed in the atmospheric details of Jazz Age-Asheville as our hero investigates a murder at the Grove Park Inn. Robbins faces his biggest challenge yet, especially when wealthy society leaders are more interested in wrapping up the case than finding real answers. The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape swept me along so powerfully that I became just as desperate as Robbins to see justice prevail.” —Heather Bell Adams, author of Maranatha Road and The Good Luck Stone
“Terry Roberts delivers with another novel about hard-boiled detective Stephen Robbins. You’ll be enthralled as Robbins uncovers a killer, and left thinking as the novel explores privilege, power, corruption, racism, and the cost of redemption. The historical setting may be illustrious, but everyone’s morals are in question.” —Leslie Logemann, Highland Books, Brevard, NC
“'Just how fond of you am I?' is an enticing question that helps launch Terry Roberts’ red-hot new novel, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape. And what does a 10-gauge shotgun have to do with prostitution in 1920s Asheville, North Carolina—at the Grove Park Inn, no less? And how much does Roberts’ depiction of elite family control of towns and counties in the 1920s differ from the same phenom a century later? Not at all. If you want a needle-threading, button-popping literary crime novel that you can’t put down, then pick this one up. Quickly." —Clyde Edgerton, author of Redeye
"A gripping story with an unflinching view of Asheville in 1924, it echoes Thomas Wolfe, John Ehle, and Robert Morgan, and looks forward, we hope, to another Stephen Robbins mystery, perhaps co-starring the elusive Anna Ulmann.” —Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee
"It is a special pleasure to welcome the latest addition to the Stephen Robbins Chronicles. The master solver of murders is thrilling to watch as he unriddles crimes of sex, corruption in high places, cruel discrimination. This novel by a master storyteller is set at the legendary Grove Park Inn in the Asheville of Roaring Twenties excesses. Terry Roberts proves once again his distinction as one of our finest novelists, in a narrative of sinister danger, enduring love.” —Robert Morgan, Author of Chasing the North Star
"You'll hang on to every word and read long into the night in this superbly crafted historical mystery." —Mark Kaufman, owner of Story & Song Bookstore Bistro
"Terry Roberts' latest novel, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, evokes the glamor of the Roaring Twenties in the magnificent setting of the Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina. Corrupt officials, sultry dames and a world weary but tenderhearted detective combine to create a cracking story replete with secrets, twists and characters who linger in your mind long after the story is over." —Amy Tector, author of the Dominion Archives Mysteries Series
“Terry Roberts writes the best of historical fiction: his novels show us the complexities of our past and present selves while at the same time entertaining the hell out of us. In The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, he takes a deep and gritty dive into the granular history of Asheville, where a murder at the famous Grove Park Inn exposes the nastiness at the center of the mountain city’s flashiest strata. Stephen Robbins investigates, and as usual, we're glad to follow.” —Julia Franks, author of The Say So
“This is a propulsive read with great noir atmosphere, third in the “chronicles” of Stephen Robbins. … I’ll be back for future installments no matter where Robbins ends up crimesolving.” —The Historical Novel Society
“Those familiar with Asheville and those who love mysteries won’t want to miss this engaging novel.… 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.” —The Southern Literary Review
