The Complete Accomplice collects Steve Aylett's “Accomplice” novels Only an Alligator, The Velocity Gospel, Dummyland, and Karloff's Circus, all of which center on the titular town of Accomplice, a place of such unbelievable reality that even the demons beneath the surface have difficulty dealing with its all-too-human inhabitants.

For Barny Juno and his ragtag cronies, it's home. They've never known anywhere else and they aren't even sure anywhere else exists. Here, demonic forces are the status quo. No one so much as raises an eyebrow when a demon erupts from hell to devour the brain of local philosopher Bingo Violaine.

Barny's troubles begin during the mundane task of walking a dog. He spots the demon and chases it into the “creepchannel” (a demonic subway system), where he discovers an alligator trapped in the wall. In his desire to “care for the winged and stepping animals of the earth,” he frees the reptile and takes it home. Unfortunately, the alligator, a virtual appetizer on a dinner plate, belonged to the demon king Sweeney. Thus begins Sweeney's attempts to exact revenge for the theft . . .

That only sets the stage. The Complete Accomplice is an incredibly complex narrative that witnesses the hapless Barny dodge disaster at every turn, completely oblivious to what happens around him. Aylett keeps several distinct but related plots going simultaneously, all in some way connected to Juno and his friends. Add to this intricate narrative a masterful prose style rich in imagery and dense in execution. In many cases, each sentence is a delicacy to be carefully tasted, ingested, and digested. The dialogue can be unwieldy, at times misleading, simply by way of a feminine pronoun in reference to a male character, or in more extreme instances, stringing together words that baffle and even intimidate with their seeming randomness.

In the author's defense, he is consistent with and keenly aware of this essentially literary dynamic. As a writer, Aylett has an unparalleled gift and demands that readers rise to the challenge of his expert wit and intellect. As he develops the explosively insane world that is the city of Accomplice, so does the capable reader develop the ability to negotiate this narrative terration. If nothing else, the overblown verbiage adequately reflects a setting where corruption has a tangible, often pyrotechnic effect (e.g., an infestation of “floor lobsters” in the Mayor's office) and everyone relies on the sayings of one Bingo Violaine to save them the trouble of thinking too much.

There is a lot to digest in The Complete Accomplice's 386 pages. Admittedly, it is complicated, nebulous and demanding, but so is talking to in-laws and trying to convince yourself that God exists and the world isn't such a bad place, at least for sharp-minded and sophisticated readers, a dying breed that may not have spawned in the first place. In the words of Violaine: “Infinity has so much structure, it has no structure.”

– Emory B. Pueschel