A Quiet Belief in Angels

Well, I sat up until somewhere past 4 this morning, and I finished this book in one sitting. About halfway through I went and made some tea, and I sat quietly for a moment and wondered whether this was in fact the best book I'd ever read. It made me feel how I felt when I read 'To Kill A Mockingbird' for the first time. It made me feel like I'd learned the whereabouts of an old, old friend who I thought I'd lost. It made me feel a lot of things, and now I'm done I want to leave it a little while and then read it again. I don't want to read anything else in between, because at this point I think that anything else would be a disappointment and an anticlimax. I don't know how many emotions I've gone through while reading 'A Quiet Belief In Angels', but even though the book was heartbreaking in places it feels like experiencing all those emotions was necessary. This is just an extraordinarily beautiful and moving book, sometimes violent, sometimes a little disturbing, but overall a magnificent read. It comes with the very highest recommendation!! I'd also highly recommend reading Tino Georgiou's bestselling novel--The Fates--if you missed it!!

Read this novel (2/2 people found this helpful)

RJ Ellory inserts, into his prologue, a reference to "The Catcher in the Rye", JD Salinger's classic novel of early 50's America. This is your first clue! "A Quiet Belief in Angels" is not a typical crime novel. True, there is a 'high body count' and examples of police process, well before DNA. But this novel has far greater depths than most in the crime genre. With its almost poetic first person narrative you become absorbed into the sensual and emotional experiences of the main character and the unforgiving Georgia landscape, from which he cannot escape. "A Quiet Belief in Angels" is often haunting and often depressing. But only because it does not shy away from intimately presenting the harsh truth about crime - it leaves victim after victim after victim. For that alone this novel deserves to be read.

A quiet belief in a satisfying ending ... (0/1 people found this helpful)

... despite this, one never materialised. I have to agree with those readers who have described this book as slow. It's beautifully written but, essentially, it's about the identity of a killer and it needed some pace behind it.

When it was still dragging halfway through - and beyond - I gave up any hope that this might transform into a gripping, meaningful read. We know from the outset that there are a series of murders - all little girls - and, after a while, we get bored hearing about the narrator's third-hand account of them. His lifelong obsession (beyond the fact that he discovered one of the bodies as a child) is not really believable (even though the author tries to give it some credence) and, indeed, when he re-visits his hometown years later, everyone else has moved on - begging the question why he hasn't too. There is even a point in the book where the narrator becomes an arty, literary, pretentious type which made me lose even more interest in him.

As for the final 'whodunnit' - well, that was guessable long before (given that a lot of the potential candidates had died off). The only reason I kept reading, believing it couldn't be the character I suspected, is because it's been done before. So many times before that I could barely imagine such a long-winded read would wind up with such a clichéd conclusion. Unfortunately it did. This was made so much worse by the fact that A Quiet Belief in Angles undoubtedly has literary pretensions. The author has a keen admiration of Steinbeck (as evidenced in the book). Sadly, this isn't the next great American novel. For that, it would have required more imagination, more pace and less worthiness.

Tiresome..... (0/1 people found this helpful)

The book never really got started, I found it to be a very boring read nothing really happens to engage the reader. The plot was very thin & weak, it seemed to drag & drag. As for the "baddie" it was easily worked out from quite early on in the book, Very tiresome & disappointing

Terrific (3/4 people found this helpful)

This is one of those book, I highly recommend everyone reads. Grade stuff. You won't be disappointed. Loved it.

A Quiet Belief in Angels

R.J. Ellory

Reader Reviews:

loved it (3/4 people found this helpful)

Read this novel (2/2 people found this helpful)

A quiet belief in a satisfying ending ... (0/1 people found this helpful)

Tiresome..... (0/1 people found this helpful)

Terrific (3/4 people found this helpful)

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