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Felix Castor series

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1

The Devil You Know ~ paperback version

The Devil You Know (2006)

1. The Devil You Know (2006) ~ Hardback edition

The Felix Castor series is written by Mike Carey. 

Genres & Sub-Genres[]

Noir Urban Fantasy

Brief Series Description or Overview[]

Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. At a time when the supernatural world is in upheaval and spilling over into the mundane reality of the living, his skills have never been more in demand. Felix has a unique talent for using music to exorcise spirits, demons and the like. When he's not expelling spooks he's performing stage magic at ungrateful children's birthday parties.

The Felix Castor novels are modern, hard-boiled detective stories with a supernatural, dark fantasy twist and a healthy dose of black humor.

Lead's Species[]

  • Exorcist

Primary Supe[]

  • Demons, ghosts

What Sets it Apart[]

Narrative Type and Narrators[]

Books in Series[]

Felix Castor series: 

  1. The Devil You Know (2006)
  2. Vicious Circle (2006)
  3. Dead Men's Boots (2007)
  4. Thicker Than Water (2009)
  5. The Naming of the Beasts (2008)
  6. The Ghost in Bone (2023) (novella)

World Building[]

Setting[]

London, England

Supernatural Elements[]

✥ Exorcist, demons, ghosts,

Glossary:[]

Groups & Organizations:[]

World[]

Protagonist[]

✥

Sidekick[]

  • Name: / What: / Sidekick-to: / About: / Book First Seen:

Characters Chart[]

Characters What About
Felix Castor ghostbuster
Fix
Rafael Ditko
Rafi
Damjohn

To expand the table, in Edit–Visual mode, right-press on a Row of the table or Column (Control-press on a Mac)—choose add Row or Column. Or, in Source Mode: copy-paste rows.

Mike Carey

Mike Carey

Author[]

Mike Carey

Bio: Mike Carey is a British writer whose work spans comics, novels, film scripts, and TV shows. After writing shorts for British sci-fi comic 2000 AD and a few one-shots for Caliber Comics during the 1990s, he was offered DC/Vertigo’s Lucifer — henceforth the longest running and most successful Sandman-related spinoff to date. While continuing to work with DC on Vertigo series like Crossing Midnight and graphic novels like God Save The Queen, he took over as lead writer for Marvel’s X-Men (now X-Men: Legacy) in 2006. His work includes DC/Vertigo’s Hellblazer, Marvel’s Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Felix Castor novels, The Steel Seraglio (with Linda and Louise Carey), and DC/Vertigo’s The Unwritten (with Peter Gross). ~ About Mike & Peter | Mike Carey & Peter Gross

Cover Artist[]

  1. The Devil You Know: Alex Williamson, (2006, UK, Orbit) — Source: ISFdb: Cover: The Devil You Know
  2. Vicious Circle: Herman Estevez (2008, US, Grand Central) ~and~ Alex Williamson (2006, UK, Orbit) — Source: Bibliography: Vicious Circle
  3. Dead Men's Boots: Herman Estevez (2010 USA, Grand Central) ~and~ Tim Byrne (2007 UK, Orbit) — Source: Bibliography: Dead Men's Boots
  4. Thicker Than Water: Tim Byrne (2009, UK, Orbit) — Source: Bibliography: Cover: Thicker Than Water
  5. The Naming of the Beasts: (none listed)

Artist:

Publishing Information[]

  1. The Devil You Know: Hardcover, 406 pages, Pub. July 10th 2007, ISBN 0446580309 (Grand Central Publishing)
  2. Vicious Circle: Hardcover, 448 pages. Pub. July 28th 2008, ISBN 0446580311 (Grand Central Publishing)
  3. Dead Men's Boots: Hardcover, 432 pages. Pub. July 23, 2009. ISBN 0446580325 (Grand Central Publishing)
  4. Thicker Than Water:
  5. The Naming of the Beasts:
  6. The Ghost in Bone: Hardcover, 138 pages. Pub. September 15th, 2023, ISBN 1645241335 (Subterranean Press)

Book Cover Blurbs[]

✤ BOOK ONE—The Devil You Know (2006): Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghost buster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle—but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London - just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off. ~ Goodreads | The Devil You Know

✤ BOOK TWO—Vicious Circle (2006): Felix Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after a successful case convinces him that he really can do some good with his abilities---"good," of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead. His friend Rafi is still possessed, the succubus Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends) still technically has a contract on him, and he's still dirt poor. Doing some consulting for the local cops helps pay the bills, but Castor needs a big private job to really fill the hole in his bank account. That's what he needs. What he gets is a seemingly insignificant "missing ghost" case that inexorably drags him and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise one of hell's fiercest demons. When satanists, stolen spirits, sacrifice farms, and haunted churches all appear on the same police report, the name Felix Castor can't be too far behind... ~ Goodreads | The Devil You Know (Felix Castor, #1) by Mike Carey

✤ BOOK THREE—Dead Men's Boots (2007): You might think that helping a friend's widow to stop a lawyer from stealing her husband's corpse would be the strangest thing on your To Do list. But life is rarely that simple for Felix Castor. A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of a long-dead American serial killer, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved. He's also fighting a legal battle over the body - if not the soul - of his possessed friend, Rafi, and can't shake the feeling that his three problems might be related. With the help of the succubus Juliet and paranoid zombie data-fence Nicky Heath, Castor just might have a chance of fitting the pieces together before someone drops him down a lift shaft or rips his throat out. Or not. ~ Goodreads | Vicious Circle (Felix Castor, #2) by Mike Carey

✤ BOOK FOUR—Thicker Than Water (2009): In the fourth gripping book in the highly acclaimed series Publishers Weekly calls "every bit as good as the better-known Jim Butcher," old ghosts of different kinds come back to haunt Felix. Names and faces he thought he'd left behind in Liverpool resurface in London, bringing Castor far more trouble than he'd anticipated. Childhood memories, family traumas, sins old and new, and a council estate that was meant to be a modern utopia until it turned into something like hell—these are just some of the sticks life uses to beat Felix Castor with as things go from bad to worse for London’s favorite freelance exorcist. See, Castor’s stepped over the line this time, and he knows he’ll have to pay; how much is the only question. Not the best of times, then, for an unwelcome confrontation with his holier-than-thou brother, Matthew, and just when he thinks things can't possibly get any worse, along comes Father Gwillam and the Anathemata. Oh joy.  ~ Goodreads | Thicker Than Water (Felix Castor, #4) by Mike Carey

✤ BOOK FIVE—The Naming of the Beasts (2008): They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but if you ask Castor he'll tell you there's quite a bit of arrogance and reckless stupidity lining the streets as well. And he should know. There's only so many times you can play both sides against the middle and get away with it. Now, the inevitable moment of crisis has arrived and it's left Castor with blood on his hands. Well, not his hands, you understand; it's always someone else who pays the bill: friends, acquaintances, bystanders. So Castor drowns his guilt in cheap whisky, while an innocent woman lies dead and her daughter comatose, his few remaining friends fear for their lives and there's a demon loose on the streets. But not just any demon - this one rides shotgun on his best friend's soul and can't be expelled without killing him. Looks like Felix Castor's got some tough choices to make, because expel the demon he must or all Hell will break loose. Literally. ~ Goodreads | The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor, #5) by Mike Carey

✤ BOOK SIX—The Ghost in Bone (2023): London's exorcists! I have a reward for all of you, a job for one of you. Come to Brierley House, 20th April, 9.00am.' The newspaper ad is a baited hook and it smells like a three-day old corpse. But hey, it's a grand in hand just for turning up so Felix Castor goes in anyway, alongside the curdled cream of his dubious profession. And once he's in it's hard to get out again. Brierley House is the home of Russian oligarch Gavril Ustinov, now missing, his driven daughter Ksenia Ustinova and their staff of taciturn, sinister domestics. It also hosts an invisible force that attacks exorcists and negates their abilities--a force that seems to be centuries old. Ksenia wants Castor to locate her missing father, alive or dead. Castor wants to find out who set a trap for exorcists back in the late Middle Ages and what else they were up to. For a job this big he's got friends he can call on: zombie data-fence Nicky Heath, reformed succubus Juliet Salazar, jaded cop Gary Coldwood and Trudie Pax, the Anathemata's finest warrior. But the ghosts of Brierley are many, and they won't give up their secrets lightly... - Goodreads | The Ghost in Bone (Felix Castor, #6) by Mike Carey

First Sentences[]

  1. The Devil You Know (2006) — Normally I wear a czarist army greatcoat - the kind that sometimes gets called a paletot - with pockets sewn in for my tin whistle, my notebook, a dagger, and a chalice.
  2. Vicious Circle (2006) — The incense stick burned with an orange flame and smelled of Cannabis Sativa.
  3. Dead Men's Boots (2007) — I don't do funerals all that often, and when I do, I prefer to be either falling-down drunk or dosed up on some herbal fuzz-bomb like salvinorin to the point where I start to lose feeling from the feet on up, like a kind of rising damp of the central nervous system.
  4. Thicker Than Water (2009) — This is kind of how it would have looked, if you were watching from the outside—and this is how the papers reported it when they finally got hold of the story.
  5. The Naming of the Beasts (2008) — It's strange how other people's deaths can take you, sometimes.
  6. The Ghost in Bone (2023) - It's not often I visit with Nicky Heath these days, since he put his body in deep-deep-freeze and went off on his low-rent spirit journey, so when I got a text message from hm one day last spring asking me to come over I went along just out of curiosity.

Felix Castor Series

Quotes[]

Trivia[]

Awards[]

British Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Novel (2007)

Read Alikes (similar elements)[]

See Category links at bottom of page

Notes[]

See Also[]

See Category links at bottom of page

External References[]

Books:

Summaries:

Characters, etc:

Author:

Community and Fan Sites:

Gallery of Book Covers[]

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