Customer Reviews
A Cobbled Together Shoddy Rigmarole - By: Mrs. Judith Lugg, 11 Aug 2008 
If there was provision for less than one star in the rating, this book would have it! Wheatley was, apparently, persuaded by the publisher to do this and, initiallly refused; he should have stuck to his original conclusion - the book is awful. It is 'lavishly' illustrated with various drawings & pictures, which actuallly add nothing to the narrative & are not referred to either!
It makes me sad to say this, as I read alll of his many fiction books many years ago & thoroughly enjoyed them. They do come over a little stilted, when read now, but the good stories are still there!
'The Devil & All His Works" is just a ramble in & out of various subjects, esoteric & otherwise, interspersed with various personal anecdotes; although there are chapter divisions subjects do not adhere to the headings & the whole is very confused. You are even give a lesson in Palmistry ; odd this, as it is supposed to be a straightforward account. It would have better for him to refer the reader to another book on this subject rather than interrupt the flow (said rather sardonicallly) with these 'side-shows'
I do realise that things have changed in that we are no longer shocked by things as. perhaps we would have been in 1971, when the book was published, but, evenso, the content comes over somehow as being very 'tame''.
Having said alll this, I do agree with most of his conclusions but, here again, they are not expressed in a cohesive manner & leave a lot to be desired.
All in alll, I feel that Wheatley did this to order to fulfil his obligation, as it reallly does give one the feeling of it being cobbled together in a hurry without much forethought, unlike his fiction which flows along beautifully & is even rather 'racey' at times for the era when it was published.
I was reallly looking forward to reading this, but what a waste of money & what a disappointment!
I certainly do not recommend this book unless as an example of a bad one.
