The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle Announces New Novel Devil House

For nearly 30 years, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle has been writing poignant and sharp short stories and recording them in song form. Darnielle was one of the best writers in America long before he ever wrote a book, but it turns out that he’s pretty great at writing books, too. Real heads know that Darnielle’s real first book was the truly great 33 1/3 entry about Black Sabbath’s Master Of Reality, published in 2008 as a novella about a kid in a psych ward. Since then, Darnielle has published two much-admired novels: 2014’s Wolf In White Van, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and 2016’s Universal Harvester, which was really just as good. Today, Darnielle announces that he’s got another one on the way.

Early next year, Darnielle will publish his new book Devil House. Like Darnielle’s last two books, this one seems, at least vaguely, like a horror novel. Like his last two books, it will probably go to some strange and deep places. Here’s how the promotional copy describes the story:

An epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, artistic obsession, and the dangers of storytelling, from the inimitable John Darnielle.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him.

Now he is a true-crime writer with one grisly success—and movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent lesser efforts that have paid the bills but not much more. But he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house—what the locals call “The Devil House” — in which a briefly notorious pair of murders occurred in 1980s, apparently the work of disaffected teens. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected — back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

John Darnielle has long been known to millions of Mountain Goats fans as a storyteller of uncanny sensitivity and mythic power. In Universal Harvester, and in Wolf In White Van before it, he has proven himself a novelist of the highest order. With Devil House, Darnielle rises above with a novel that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a gripping tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.

Devil House is out 1/25/22, and you can pre-order it here. The Mountain Goats released their new album Dark In Here a couple of months ago, and they’re on tour now.