A Quiet Belief In Angels

by R.J. Ellory and Roger Jon Ellory

Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1940s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Barely a teenager himself, Joseph becomes determined to try to protect his community and classmates from the predations of the killer. But despite banding together with his friends as 'Guardians', he was powerless to prevent more murders - and no one was ever caught. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope - with articles from the dead girls around him. Thankfully though, the killings finally ceased. Ill-fortune was not yet done with Joseph though and in desperation he leaves the town of his birth to forge a new life in New York. But the past won't leave him alone - for it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again. And the secret of his identity lies in Joseph's own history?

• ISBN10: 0752873687
• ISBN13: 9780752873688
• Publish Date: 22 August 2007
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 23 March 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

This book was a wonderful surprise. It had me from the open:

"Rumor, hearsay, folklore. Whichever way it laid down to rest or came up for air, rumor had it that a white feather indicated the visitation of an angel.

On the morning of Wednesday, July twelfth, 1939, I saw one, long and slender and unlike any kind of feather I’d seen before. It skirted the edge of the door as I opened it, almost as if it had waited patiently to enter, and the draft from the hallway carried it into my room."

And kept me reading with beautiful passages like this:

"Love, I would later conclude, was all things to all people. Love was the breaking and healing of hearts. Love was misunderstood, love was faith, love was the promise of now that became hope for the future. Love was a rhythm, a resonance, a reverberation. Love was awkward and foolish, it was aggressive and simple and possessed of so many indefinable qualities that it could never be conveyed in language. Love was being."

Joseph Vaughn’s childhood is marred by murder of several local girls, all presumably at the hands of a single serial killer. These events color not only his childhood, but his entire life as he becomes obsessed with the crimes. He can’t seem to catch a break, his life rocked time after time by tragedy. A gifted writer, Joseph eventually moves to New York City in an attempt to leave it all behind, but it’s not that easy.

This was a really sneaky mystery. Ellory drops little breadcrumbs every so often, and just when you think you know what’s going on, things take a turn. I was wrong about who the killer was, yet it all made sense in the end. The setting is also worked into the story very well… the attitudes of people due to World War II play a significant part, as well as the small town southern setting. This is Ellory’s fifth book, and I can’t wait to track down the others. I am a new fan.