The Devil’s Horsewhip (Barbican Press) by Damion Spencer is a visceral debut novel-in-stories, an exploration of death and darkness in the lives of characters who have evaded that ultimate fate once before. Bringing Jamaican folklore and ritual to bear on its protagonists’ fates with a chilling immediacy, The Devil’s Horsewhip keeps one foot in the subgenre of literary suspense: duppies, walking death, and other spectral visitations are never far from Spencer’s prose. Other themes addressed in the novel are an expatriate configuration of home, cultural alienation, and rituals of remembrance in the throes of grief.