Narrated by Rowan Scott

This review was originally published in 2019, when this audiobook was first released. Where Death Meets the Devil is the first in a fast-paced, action-packed romantic suspense series comprising three full length novels (Where Death Meets the Devil, Why the Devil Stalks Death and When Death Frees the Devil) and five novellas – all of which are essential to the continuing relationship and character development. Narrator Rowan Scott did an outstanding job, but sadly,  only this first book has been available in audio – until now.  Decent Fellows Press (who also brought us John Wiltshire’s More Heat Than the Sun series) has recently acquired the rights to the Death and the Devil series and retained the services of Rowan Scott to record the other books (including the novellas), which are slated for release in November/December and in January 2023.  Where Death Meets the Devil has recently been reissued, and I can’t wait to listen to the rest, and for this terrific series to find the new audience it richly deserves. 

I’ve been looking for something to fill the Seven of Spades-shaped hole in my life, so I was delighted to discover L.J. Hayward’s Where Death Meets the Devil, book one in her Death and the Devil series. In it, a former SAS officer and a deadly assassin end up striking the devil’s own bargain when they’re forced to work together in order to survive a trek across the hostile Australian desert while evading a shit-ton of mercenaries in the pay of a dangerous mob boss.

Where Death Meets the Devil opens on probably the crappiest birthday ever for Jack
Reardon, who, instead of partying, drinking of lots of beer and stuffing his
face with cake, finds himself tied to a chair in a shack in the middle of the back
of beyond. He’s an operative of the Office of Counterterrorism and Intelligence
– known simply as The Office – run by the Meta-State, a top secret intelligence
network stretching across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and other
Southeast Asian countries which share information and resources to combat national
and international terrorism; and for the last fifteen months he’s been working undercover
in the criminal organisation run by Samuel Valadian in an attempt to find proof
of his association with terrorist groups around the world. But someone has
alerted Valadian to the presence of a spy in their midst – hence Jack’s current
predicament. He tries to brazen it out, but when Valadian calmly introduces his
associate Ethan Blade – one of the world’s deadliest, most ruthless killers –
Jack figures his luck has run out.

Except… it
hasn’t. Instead of killing Jack, Blade helps him to escape – and thus begins a
compelling story full of action, suspense, mind games, obfuscation, half-truths
and lies, as Jack and Ethan become reluctant allies, Ethan determined to
complete his mission to take out Valadian, Jack needing to get the valuable
intel stored in his neural implant (there’s a futuristic touch to some of the
gadgetry in the story – Jack has an implant in his head that can do all the
stuff a smartphone can do) back to his boss at the Office. Along the way, the
two men have to watch each other’s backs in order to survive, and while they
don’t exactly trust each other, an unlikely bond develops between them,
something born of mutual respect and a kind of almost instinctual mutual
understanding, at least on some levels. Complicating matters still further is
the enigma that is Ethan Blade – a riddle
wrapped in a mystery behind dark shades – a man who never gives a straight
answer to a straight question, who definitely has his own agenda, and who is a
strangely appealing mixture of childlike enthusiasm, innocence, dry humour and
cold lethality. A mixture that Jack slowly begins to find far too tempting for
his own peace of mind.

It’s not a
spoiler to say that the men do escape the desert, because Where Death Meets the Devil is in fact a brilliantly structured
dual-timeline story told in chapters that alternate between “Then” – Jack and
Ethan in the desert – and “Now”, the events of exactly one year later (and yet
another unconventional birthday for Jack!) that kick off when Ethan calmly walks
into the Sydney HQ of The Office and gives himself up. Jack is still dealing
with the fallout of what happened a year earlier; he’s not yet been cleared to
return to field duty and he’s well aware that’s because his superiors aren’t
100% convinced they can trust him. Ethan’s unexpected arrival could place
Jack’s career in further jeopardy, but the assassin isn’t talking – and Jack
knows that he’s likely the only person who will be able to find out what games
Blade is playing. So, a year to the day since they first met, Jack and Ethan
find themselves facing off again – except this time, Jack is determined to keep
both his distance and the upper hand. He knows that there’s no way Ethan would
have surrendered to the authorities for no reason, but if Jack’s to find
exactly what’s going on, he’s going to have to decide once and for all whether
he can really afford to trust Ethan Blade.

I was
absolutely captivated by the story from the very beginning and remained pretty much
on the edge of my seat the whole way through! Sometimes in dual timeline
stories, I find one storyline more compelling than the other, but that wasn’t
the case here at all; L.J. Hayward has structured the story so well, creating a
series of (mini) cliffhangers between chapters that dovetail together or mirror
each other in such a way that the transitions never jar. The plot is incredibly
clever, but what makes the novel so special is the central relationship and the
characterisation of the two leads. Jack and Ethan are like different sides of
the same coin – a fact that doesn’t escape Jack – in that they both kill for
money, but they come at it from completely different ends of the legal and
moral spectrum. Both of them are clearly carrying around a significant amount
of emotional baggage, Jack from his time in the SAS, and Ethan… well, there’s
still a lot we don’t know about him. Their relationship is superbly written,
too, a wonderful, sexy mixture of opposites attract, enemies-to-lovers and
sizzling slow burn that culminates in love scenes that are hot, sensual and
organic to the story, serving to build intimacy and illustrate the shifting
feelings the two men are developing for one another. And those feelings are
extremely well articulated even though the story is told entirely from Jack’s
PoV; this enables Ethan to remain something of an enigma, but the author does a
fabulous job of showing us Ethan through Jack’s eyes, revealing a surprising
vulnerability that Jack doesn’t always see. The story ends with a promising
HFN, and I’m really hoping that the rest of the books (there’s a series of
novellas set between books one and two, and a third full-length novel in the
works, I believe) will follow in audio at some point.

The name Rowan
Scott was completely unknown to me, and when I looked him up at Audible, I found
only this audiobook listed for him, so I admit to being a little apprehensive
before I started listening. But this turned out to be one of the times when a
new-to-me narrator proved to be a pleasant surprise; Mr. Scott delivers a
strong performance, and as the story takes place in Australia and most of the
characters are Australian, I was really pleased to hear an Australian narrator
had been used. His voice is easy on the ear, his performance is well-paced, and
while he doesn’t have a particularly wide range when it comes to timbre or
pitch, he differentiates fairly effectively between the large secondary cast,
and his portrayal of the two leads is excellent. He captures the dynamic
between them really well, and the English accent he uses to portray Ethan is
accurate and consistent throughout (and ridiculously sexy, too!). The
interactions between the pair are well-timed and the ever-changing emotions
between them nicely played. On the downside, the female characters in the story
don’t sound particularly feminine, and one character sounds as though he’s got
a cold, but otherwise, Mr. Scott’s pacing is good, his enunciation is clear and
he’s emotionally engaged with the story in a way that communicates itself to
the listener and definitely added to my overall enjoyment.

Where Death Meets the Devil is a terrific start to what promises to be a hugely
entertaining series. The plot is complex and twisty, the central characters are
compelling, and their relationship is just the sort of messed-up and angsty
that I tend to enjoy. It’s highly recommended – but be warned… it’s addictive.
Once you’ve started listening, you won’t want to stop!