It’s a great title. It says, now I’ve got your attention I’m going to show you that the devil tells the best tales. Admit it, you’re hooked.

You turn the page. You’re ready to be entertained. And then it hits you, the opening quote by George W Bush. Did the universe just tilt and sway when I wasn’t looking? You don’t want to listen to him but you can’t disagree with what he says. Confused? You will be.

You begin and there she is – Delilah Darkstein, all American Mum and the heroine of this tale. From the moment she opens her rouged mouth, you have to love her. ‘Save your hatred for something worthy, Jez,’ she tells her teenage daughter, ‘like Monday mornings or Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

She is delivering the kids to school in the family car, a restored 66 Chrysler which just happens to boast a large pair of horns and ‘Christ bungee jumping toward the gear stick’ in place of fluffy dice. Any parent who’s ever failed to make the school run with children who don’t want to go to school can relate. But Delilah’s style is larger than life and kind of skewed but fascinating. ‘You gotta stay evil,’ she admonishes her ‘spawn’. This woman is a walking legend – she delivers the best lines in the story – so good she’s bad. Or should that be the other way round? It’s difficult to tell.

You might wonder why the adorable Lou Junior needs air holes like ‘eyeless sockets in the square skull of some unlikely alien’ in his lunch box but the pace doesn’t leave time – it sweeps you up and you read on. All will be revealed. If the style and confidence of the writing isn’t enough, the four meticulously crafted parts to this tale, Denial, Devotion, Damage and Debacle, lay out a road map to the journey the Darksteins and the reader will take. There is much to enjoy, afternoon sex rituals and unexpected revelations as the ride twists and turns.

This is scary satire – funny and terrifying. The Darksteins are ‘different’ and tolerance – unless from their loyal neighbour, ‘Mrs Shor’nuff’, who gives testimony in their favour, ‘sure as hell the nicest Satanists I ever met,’ - is in short supply among the god- fearing folk of Goat Creek. Delilah, for all her bravura and defiance, knows that her babies will never be safe and she has to protect her own. As the day wears on the shadows lengthen.

Not everything in this story is funny. There’s a missing child who doesn’t look like her photograph on the posters any more because her ‘devastated’ father knocked out her teeth. Or so Delilah says but Delilah, loyal wife to Lucifer or ‘Lou Senior’ as he is affectionately known, has secrets of her own.

And who can deny that the wonderful Lou is worthy of Delilah’s devotion? His day in court is magnificent. We see him take on the forces of discrimination, prejudice, bigotry and fear and win. He defends himself magisterially from the charges against him, ‘Am I on trial for my faith?’ And the most serious accusation levelled by the press. ‘Mr Darkstein, do you own any Marilyn Manson CDs?’

Then there are the questions, shadows that flit across a scene set for the darkest ‘comedy’. How badly does Jez Darkstein not like Fridays? And how far will she go to prove it? What will happen to a slip of a girl desperately trying to protect her kid brother when she is cornered by the school thugs? These ‘good ole’ boys aren’t playing.

Bad things happen to good people in this story. The author makes us fear for his vulnerable Darksteins taking on a hostile world with only a fallen angel to protect them. Good and bad are never absolutes. This story shifts polarities like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. As Lou Senior says, ‘I don’t want any questions bein’ raised about our innocence’. But this is a story that raises questions like flies.

Demonised or dehumanised, JwBennett shows us the consequences when people of whatever faith or persuasion begin to believe that others are less than human. The political parallels are easy to draw but are there for us to work out for ourselves, just as the darker more horrific elements of the story are left to our imagination. The writer is far too clever to hit us over the head with a message – his mission is to tell us a story that lingers in the mind and introduce us to a cast of memorable characters that we hope to meet again.

And the curtain line is fabulous.

I've finally got round to ordering this. I fancy the feel of the real thing so I'll be looking out for a red-faced postman with cloven feet, a pitch fork and a tail. Nothing to do with the book, that's just what he looks like.

Colin M