Houses of the Unholy

A teen held hostage in the trunk of a pot-smoking investigator’s car kicks off the latest haunting noir from Brubaker and Phillips (the Reckless series). Natalie Burns’s job entails removing indoctrinated kids from cults and returning them to their parents. She knows all too well how easy it is to believe lies—when she was a kid in the 1980s, she got caught up in the satanic panic and testified against her summer camp counselors. Having spent her life wrestling with vague memories of a predatory cult that she now believes to be false, Natalie is approached by a rogue FBI agent, who offers to get the criminal charges against her droppped (she kidnapped that last teen while using a fake ID) if she helps him dig into a series of murders involving her fellow accusers, known as the “Satanic Six.” But when trauma rears its ugly head and an old friend turns up dead, even the people closest to Natalie may prove to be devils in disguise. Speckled with vibrant color, bold sequencing, and carefully crafted splash pages, this dive into the underbelly of the satanic panic moves at a rapid-fire pace while sticking to the atmospheric formula Brubaker and Phillips are known for. It’s a spine-tingling addition to their oeuvre. (Aug.)