Comparing The Strangler 'And The Devil's Only Friend'
1516 Words7 Pages
Grace Holbrook
September 2nd, 2015
Summer Reading Assignment
EXCEL English Purdy 2nd Hour
The Strangler by William Landay and The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells are very similar, but very different at the same time. The Strangler is about three brothers in Boston, Massachusetts during the early 1960s. The Daley brothers are all involved with crime; Joe is a cop, Michael is a Lawyer, and Ricky is a thief. All three try to track down the famous and terrifying Boston Strangler while simultaneously trying to find their father’s killer. The Devil’s Only Friend tells the story of a seventeen-year-old sociopath named John Wayne Cleaver. John hunts demons with a special unit of the FBI. Not only does he have to worry about what he is hunting, John…show more content… When The Strangler kills Ricky’s long term girlfriend, Amy, it prompts Ricky to try and track the killer down. Ricky then leads to breaking into many different places and even beat up a man who he believes to be The Strangler. It is later written that he could have been the actual Strangler. It is revealed towards the end of the book that Amy was not killed by The Strangler. When Joe Daley is killed, Michael goes after Gargano, his killer. After Michael gets to him, they fight and Michael tortures Gargano about who ordered the kill. Michael then proceeds to kill Gargano and dump his body in a construction site. Before the start of the book the brothers’ father was killed, and it is revealed in the end that his partner, Conroy, knew who killed him and was indirectly the cause of his death. When the brother’s mom, who was in a relationship with Conroy, finds out, she goes to his apartment and kills Conroy when he is in the shower. They’re a very vengeful…show more content… John follows rules that he had set for himself. He can’t have pets, no weapons, live alone, no physical contact with people, etc. John is the only person that before being put on the team had killed Withered before. He has to release his urges every couple weeks by either cutting up raw meat or setting fires in a park. When a Withered the team is hunting is killed, the withered’s dog is left ownerless. This causes John to be forced to break one of his rules. He takes the dog and begins to take care of it because, if he didn’t he could possibly harm the dog which would lead to breaking another rule of his. Later in the book, John has to live with another member of the team for safety reasons, because of this, along with the dog, John slowly starts to lose control of his mind. The team tracks down a Withered and because they were not prepared, John, who is usually kept out of the killing for obvious reasons, kills the Withered to protect a member of his team. However, he kills the Withered in one hit but then continues to stab said Withered multiple times in overkill. All of these things are temptations to him and are slowly leading to his mental