Friend of the Devil

TV producer and writer Lloyd’s middling debut, a gory horror thriller set in the 1980s, starts strongly, but underdeveloped characters and a familiar plotline undercut the momentum. Hard-boiled insurance investigator Sam Gregory, a Korean War vet, is dispatched by his employer to Danforth Putnam, an upscale prep school located on its own island off the Massachusetts coast. A valuable 11th-century manuscript was stolen from a supposedly uncrackable library safe, a crime the police don’t take seriously. Sam interviews students and staff members to get some leads, an inquiry that coincides with a rampage on the island by a possibly demonic something that cuts a bloody swath through the island’s residents. The slaughter gives the gumshoe another, and more pressing, mystery to solve at his own peril. The unremarkable depiction of a creepy boarding school harboring dark secrets from its past matches a climax unlikely to impress or surprise those who have read this kind of book before. Seekers of genuine scares will have to look elsewhere. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (May)