Tags: Horror, Demons, The Devil’s Advocate
This is the second of 3 posts about The Devil’s Advocate. After reading the book and re-watching the 1997 movie adaptation, I decided to review both and then compare them. After the movie, I’ll now focus on the book by Andrew Neiderman. Warning: SPOILERS.
After winning a controversial case, Kevin Taylor receives a job offer from a New York law firm, Milton and Associates. He accepts and moves to the city with his wife, Miriam. The 2 are welcomed with open arms by his new colleagues, who are more like a very close knit family than mere coworkers. Watching over them is their charismatic boss, John Milton. However, while Miriam happily settles in her new life, Kevin starts to suspect that there’s something dark and evil behind this alluring facade…
“But you’re not just standing above it all, Kevin,” he continued, speaking in undulating tones that to Kevin seemed to be coming from within his own mind. It was as if John Milton had entered his very soul, had housed himself in some empty chamber in his heart and now truly possessed him. “You are above it all, and now we know, it will all be yours.”
In the Prologue, one of the lawyers at Milton and Associates, Richard Jaffee, jumps out of his balcony after winning a case; so, readers know from the start that idyllic workplace isn’t as idyllic as it seems. It’s not a matter of whether the Taylors’ new life is going to turn bad, but of when it’s going to happen and just how bad it’s going to be. That the limo driver who takes the lawyers everywhere is named Charon adds to the feeling of dread, as does the fact that the new apartment Kevin and Miriam love belonged to Jaffee and his wife. Helen, the wife of one of Kevin’s new colleagues, Paul, provides some ominous warnings about the fate that awaits him and Miriam if they stay, as well as a spooky painting that makes everyone uncomfortable. On the opposite end, filled with laughter and constant activity, are Norma and Jean, the wives of Kevin’s other 2 colleagues, Dave and Ted, who waste no time making Miriam into one of their own. Paul, Dave, and Ted are equally happy and confident, winning case after case and constantly praising John Milton. After meeting him, Kevin is equally impressed:
Kevin noticed he had a firmness about him, something regal in the way he held his head and shoulders. He sat down like a monarch assuming his throne.
Milton describes his law firm as a family, and the other 3 lawyers see him as a father. They even live in the same building, in lavish apartments that are everything Miriam and Kevin ever wanted. Neiderman did a good job of showing how both of them got pulled into this new world, and I’m sure other, super extroverted and sociable people would feel the same as the soon-to-be unhappy couple, but for me the whole thing looked suffocating rather than cozy. Everyone is basically always together, and their boss even gives them advice on their personal lives. On top of that, there’s that very detailed personal file about Kevin that apparently all his new colleagues read. I don’t care how good those apartments are, I would’ve been out of there so fast! Poor Kevin, thinking that the fact that the frames on the walls of his new office, which, by the way, had belonged to Jaffee, were the exact same number as his degrees was a good omen as if it were just a fortunate coincidence…
However, even as Kevin falls for the allure of John Milton and Associates, the darkness underneath isn’t that well hidden. That family-like atmosphere has some cult-like undertones, and the people there are all strangely alike, both in speech and in demeanour.
The three looked at him, all smiling the same way, their looks so similar, in fact, it was almost as if they were wearing identical masks.
Milton seems to love giving his lawyers disturbing cases, too, like making Dave, who’s Jewish, defend a former Nazi, who is very likely a serial killer. That he always asks to see some gruesome extra info, like autopsy reports, makes things creepier. Oh, and he really hates it when people say ‘Jesus’. However, Kevin has some darkness of his own. The first client we see him defend is a teacher accused of abusing 3 of her young students; a case that Miriam isn’t happy he accepted, and she outright asks him if he believes the teacher is innocent. Kevin’s reply? Maybe. John Milton, though, digs a little further:
You weren’t completely sure, but in your heart you thought she had abused Barbara Stanley and that Barbara Stanley, afraid to come forward by herself, worked her friends into a frenzy and got them to join her.
That case, the one that got him noticed, will haunt Kevin throughout the book, until he finally confesses the same thing Milton told him to Miriam, but by then, they’re both too far gone for it to matter.
Kevin’s suspicions grow as he begins to wonder how Milton can possibly know things that should’ve been impossible for anyone to know, and Miriam becomes more and more unrecognizable. Unlike her husband, Miriam doesn’t seem to notice anything, and while we get to see her first meeting with Norma and Jean from her POV, which shows just how they will be influencing her, she becomes one more source of concern and confusion for Kevin. I get why Neiderman did that, as the goal was to isolate him and if Miriam also started freaking out that wouldn’t have been possible, but it would’ve been nice to get a little more about her part of the story. Milton’s plans for the couple get even more sinister when Kevin starts to dream of a man who looks just like him having sex with Miriam as he watches, unable to move. Except they’re not really dreams, as his wife remembers everything very well and even becomes pregnant. Helen warns him about the pregnancy, which killed Jaffee’s wife and will kill Miriam, too, if he doesn’t do anything, which adds a sense of urgency. After Kevin makes another disturbing discovery about Milton and Associates, he goes to someone he thinks will help him, and even gets instructions on how to kill Satan from a retired priest, Father Vincent. Milton doesn’t have a villain monologue and the confrontation between them is pretty quick, so it’s up to Kevin and Father Vincent to tell the readers his plans and real connection to his employees.
They mean it when they say this firm’s a family. It is. He’s their father, really their father!
Not only lawyers, but politicians, doctors, teachers, just as you suggest: everyone working within the system to corrupt the soul of mankind and defeat God Himself.
At one point, Kevin refers to Milton as ‘the devil’s advocate’, which surprised me because I always thought the title referred to Kevin himself, though, when you think about it, that wouldn't make much sense. In addition to being too easy and a lousy way to end the book, the plan to defeat Milton also made no sense given all the emphasis on his preternatural ability to know everything. Why would Kevin think he could surprise him? It was also weird that after guessing Milton’s relationship with his employees, he never wondered about his own parentage. To make matters worse, instead of skipping over the trial and just adding a short summary to his inner monologue, Neiderman gave it a whole chapter. It just didn’t feel necessary to spend so much time on it when it was clear that the endgame wasn’t Kevin exposing Satan’s devious plans for Humanity in a court of law. The only good bits were him trying to make arrangements for the baby with a Miriam who’s being taken over by the demon spawn growing in her womb because he knows she’s going to die. Anyway, since the Devil isn’t known for being dumb, of course everything turned out to be part of a bigger plan and Kevin completely fell for it. I liked the character’s ending, but not these last chapters.
VERDICT
The Devil’s Advocate is about corruption rather than flashy displays of demonic power. Milton is a good Satan (or Satan-adjacent), and Kevin is a good foil, struggling to hold onto his conscience even as he admits to the evil in his heart. It’s when Kevin goes from haunted to practical that the story begins to falter. However, it gets better in the very end when he finally understands and accepts himself and his fate. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s still a good read.
By Danforth
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