Congratulate the Devil

Mescal had always had its routes into the world, as this novel's complex relationships show: Starling knows a chemist named Roper, who knows a painter named Jourbert, who knows a man in Mexico who works for the government. There has been a new shipment of mescal, but it is not quite what anyone expected. This is a new drug that opens the doors of perception for a man such as Roper, hiding away in his north London laboratory. He can make people work for him and turn his friends into fools or murderers—if only he could control his own mind.