The Devil’s Footprints

Amanda Stevens
Mira Books (2008)
ISBN 9780778325307
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (5/08)


Amanda Stevens’ “The Devil’s Footprints” has the reader guessing from the opening pages. While plenty of novels have supernatural events and characters, I anticipated that this story’s supernatural events were going to be explained away rationally, but I had no idea how. From the opening chapter when a man finds the devil’s footprints in the snow to his front door and then down from his back door, making it appear the devil had walked through his home, I was gripped with the story.

The novel centers around Sarah DeLaune, whose sister Rachel was murdered several years before. Now Sarah is a tattoo artist, trying to get over a broken relationship, when her ex-lover, Sean, a detective, shows up asking her help in solving a murder. Of course, the reader expects these lovers will get back together while tracking the killer, but Sean has married since he broke up with Sarah, and an angry Sarah isn’t letting Sean push his way back into her life.

Soon Sean discovers the recent murders appear to have a resemblance to the murder of Sarah’s sister. The devil’s cloven footprints are again found around the murder victims. Where has the devil, or whoever is playing devil, been hiding all these years, and why has he returned now? Is he out to kill Sarah also? Or does Sarah know something about her sister’s murder she is not telling? Perhaps she knows something even she is not aware she knows. Sarah returns to her father’s house to seek answers. In the process, she learns family secrets that shock her, and more violence is committed.

Just when I thought I knew where Amanda Stevens was headed with her chilling ending, the plot would take another twist. Although “The Devil’s Footprints” might be a bit too grizzly for some readers, and it is a little longer than it needs to be, I found it difficult to put down until I came to the startling conclusion. I would definitely be interested in reading more of Stevens’ novels.

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