Product Description

Jenna Black has been establishing Morgan Kingsley as one of the premier female characters in the paranormal fantasy genre: a kick-ass exorcist who frees others of their demonic possessions while struggling - and embracing - her own. Black continues Morgan's dark, sexy adventures in the fourth book in the series, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL. Hosting the king of the demons is hard enough without becoming the target of a mysterious enemy with a deadly grudge. To make things worse, Morgan must also defend herself against a lawsuit that won't die and a private investigator determined to unearth her every secret. With anonymous death threats piling up and her enemy closing in, Morgan stands to lose everything she holds dear: her reputation, her boyfriend, her freedom - and maybe even her life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49538 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Whilst studying physical anthropology, Jenna Black dreamed of making fabulous discoveries about primate behaviour. However, after concluding that primates spend around 80% of their time sleeping and eating, she moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing.

Customer Reviews

An exorcist in trouble - lucky there's a demon to lend a hand
In Speak of the Devil we return to the world of Morgan Kingsley, freelance exorcist, and semi-unwilling host to Lugh, the demon king, who has been forced into possessing her body as part of a plot by his brother, Dougal, to seize the demon throne. The novel starts shortly after the end of the previous book, The Devil's Due , and Morgan's life is still in chaos following her entanglement with demon politics: the state Exorcism Board has suspended her license to practise, she still hasn't received the insurance payment after her house was burnt down, her relationship with her boyfriend, Brian, is under strain, and Lugh is continuing to attempt to seduce her at the only time they can have contact, when she is asleep and dreaming. To cap it all, the wealthy father of a man whom she was hired to exorcise, and who ended up brain dead, is suing her for negligence, adding legal problems to her other worries - it's no surprise that she feels like she's teetering on the edge of a mental collapse. It's at this point that she receives an unexpected, and most unwelcome, parcel: a severed hand - it seems that the mysterious stalker from the previous book has decided to escalate from abusive telephone calls to unpleasant gifts; a trend which continues when Brian receives some faked photographs suggesting that Morgan has been unfaithful to him, and leaves her in a rage.

If Morgan's going to get her man back, save her professional reputation - not to mention her life - and put an end to the law suit, she's got no choice but to find out what's behind both the stalking, and the suit - which is a dangerous prospect for both her and Lugh, especially when dead bodies begin piling up. It's lucky that she can rely on the assistance of Lugh's allies: Adam White, the demonically possessed police officer, and his mortal boyfriend, Dominic - a pair who regularly play a starring role in her secret fantasies, Lugh's Machiavellian brother, Raphael, whose loyalties are still suspect, and his son, Saul, newly returned to the mortal plane, and despising his father even more than she does. They are an ill-assorted group, but they are all she, and Lugh, have, and they need all the help they can get.

Black continues to move Morgan's story forward in this, the fourth volume of her adventures, and it's pleasing to see that she's developing psychologically as the plot progresses - trying to gain some self-control, admitting that she can't handle everything on her own, and beginning to work with Lugh instead of fighting him all the time. It's also good that Black makes it clear she's not a superwoman: faced with one too many upsets, Morgan does what any normal person would do and begins to sink into depression, rather than just barging on through, and it's up to Lugh to help her get over it. This allows him some development, too, and he comes over as being somewhat less manipulative and more caring this time around.

This makes the book somewhat more gripping than the previous outings, because both of the main protagonists seem more sympathetic, and by the end of the book when the plot is neatly resolved, and we've learned a few more secrets about the demons - both generally and those who Morgan knows - there's a sense of clearing the decks to, perhaps, take the fight back to Dougal in the demon realm. This means that I, at least, will be eagerly awaiting the next volume, The Devil's Playground .

Another great Morgan Kingsley book, and a preview of the next too!!
I love all of this author's works, but her MK series is far the best, and I love how each book picks up pretty much from where the last left off, with enough 'reminders' that you don't have to have a quick re-read of its predecessor. In this one, Morgan starts the book with professional worries, but happier than we've ever seen her, though she has a niggly bad conscience as she has never told her boyfriend Brian that she'd been flogged by Adam (the hunky gay Special Forces director), as that was the price to pay for saving Brian's life. She's being sued for an exorcism that went wrong, and has been suspended from work, and there's another coup brewing against Lugh, the demon residing in her, to whom she's becoming even more attracted - cue guilty feelings on top of everything else. Well, poor Morgan's luck is the same as ever, and Brian gets mailed doctored pics of her and Adam and an anonymous letter saying that she's spent nights at his place, and that her blood has been found on one of his sex toys, and whilst Brian believes her for the most, he's understandably upset at what she had to do to save him, and also as she his this from him, deeming him weak, so they break up. Lugh makes a move on her during this break, and whilst it's fantasy-sex in his words, it does make her guilty conscience even worse, and we're treated to a vision of Dom and Adam getting it on with Morgan and Lugh reciprocating. Disappointingly, unlike in the other novels, this is the one and only sex-scene that we see between Adam and Dom, and it's a fantasy/dream one, but what we do get as compensation, is that Dom and Adam really love each other, with Adam wanting Saul, Dom's ex-demon out of their lives. Anyway, Saul gets his girl, Morgan gets her guy back after a light BDSM scene, where she entrusts him with her body and welfare, and the book ends happily enough. However, we know that Lugh's enemies were gathering numbers and getting stronger, and the baddie here, Abraham, is meant to have been killed when his host was killed, but he's an extremely strong demon - he gave Lugh a run for his money - and I am not so sure that he's dead, but maybe biding his time. The end of this book gives a synopsis of the next, due out next Spring, that's already gone on preorder. All in all, another great book in the series, and it looks that whilst Morgan may not get a HEA, she's closer to the love of her life, and she knows that he loves her back as much, and that even when he left, he admitted that he would always love her, even though they might not be able to be together forever. AHHHHHH!