A Quiet Belief in Angels

Reading a novel in a matter of a couple of days is rare for me, but this morning I had 150 pages to go, and fairly galloped through it to find out whether what I thought had happened was what did happen. Just for the record, I was partly right, but got a lot wrong, despite the clues that Ellory laid.

Death took Joseph Vaughan's father in the summer of 1939 just after Joseph, 11 years old, had picked up a long slender white feather, perhaps from an angel's wing. Death came that day. Workmanlike, methodical, indifferent to fashion and favor; disrespectful of Passover, Christmas, all observance or any tradition. Death came - cold and unfeeling, the collector of life's taxation, the due paid for breathing.

In the following years Death visits show more the small community of Augusta Falls where Joseph lives with his mother, many times, as a serial killer who takes the lives of young girls after doing unspeakable things to them. At school Joseph learns of unbelievable events happening in Europe through the evil of Adolf Hitler, and when after Pearl Harbour America goes to war, the murders of the young girls continue, all girls that Joseph knows well. Joseph organises a young band of vigilantes who call themselves The Guardians, but they can do nothing, and when the latest victim is a young Jewish girl, the community of Augusta Falls turns on non-Americans, including the Krugers who live next door to Joseph and his mother. These deaths dominate the path that Joseph Vaughan's life takes and what happens to the Krugers is nothing to what will happen to Joseph Vaughan.

Ellory uses the angel's feather icon at least a couple more times in A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS. Joseph Vaughan is almost a magnet for Death - it touches those near and dear to him, and sometimes he sees it coming, and sometimes not. As a child and a young man he often sees the workings of Death as his own fault. The events that catch him up in their thrall almost cost him his sanity, but the fact that he is at heart a writer finally helps him to the truth.

I have put this book among my top finds for the year, and that is not just for a complex story well told, but also for Ellory's wonderful writing. Last week I saw a book categorised as a "literary thriller" and wondered what that actually meant. There has been a tendency not to consider crime fiction as having literary merit but I think A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS easily straddles both genres. There's a quality in its word pictures that puts it right at the top. This book should win awards! show less

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 show more play a significant part, as well as the small town southern setting. The only fault I could find with the book was the writing style. It was stiff and sometimes stuffy throughout most of the book and tended to lessen the enjoyment of the storyline. show less

Ne ho letto la recensione su un Venerdì di Repubblica: non conoscendo l'autore l'ho preso a prestito in biblioteca, ma che tortura! Il romanzo è zeppo di frasi da sottolineare, di quelle che ti restano nel cuore, che pensi avresti potuto scrivere tu, o avresti voluto che qualcuno ti dicesse.

f Steinbeck had ever written a crime novel, it might have been as good as this. If Richard Russo’s name had been on the cover, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised at the skill and energy within.

Ellory’s lyrical prose, elegant narrative structure, mystical imagination and sheer humanity raised the bar for crime genre fiction. The pace of the novel is perfect, a slow, inevitable arc from a bloody beginning to a bloody end with a long shadow of doom and destruction that darkens even the brightest moments of love and passion in this intensely sad book.

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 show more 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. show less

This book tells the story of Joseph Vaughn, who lost his father in when he was twelve, living on a farm near a small town in Georgia at the very beginning of the Second World War. Later that year, the first girl is murdered. A Quiet Belief in Angels spans over three decades, some in more detail than others, telling the story of Joseph's difficult life and the way the murders haunt him. R.J. Ellory writes in an elaborate style that suits the time period and the narrator's own complex and confused view of events. This is an event-packed novel, including a monstrous serial killer, a coming of age story, a vivid description of a place and time, madness, false imprisonment, fame, love and retribution, it nonetheless loses its forward show more momentum a few times along the way. show less

This story begins when Joseph Vaughan is twelve years old and growing up in small-town Georgia, USA. He is dealing with the untimely death of his father, the second world war is breaking out thousands of miles away and a young girl from his school has just been brutally murdered. The murder remains unsolved and, just as the town begins to move on, another girl is murdered in a similar manner. The murders continue over many years and the town of Augusta Falls is haunted by the memory of the murdered girls and the inability of ordinary people to protect their own.

Joseph Vaughan is a very bright young man, he shows early promise as a writer and is encouraged by his inspirational teacher, Miss Alexandra Webber, to write down his thoughts. show more He is a fish out of water in rural Georgia and longs to meet like-minded people and pursue his dream to become a writer. Joseph is frustrated that the killer has not been caught and so forms a group of young lads, 'The Guardians', who pledge to protect the girls of the neighbourhood and keep an eye out for suspicious goings-on. The other boys see the futility of their actions and lose both heart and interest in their plan but Joseph can't let go and feels increasingly helpless as the murders continue.

We follow Joseph's adolescence and the relentless tragedies that blight his life including his mother's mental illness and the death of his wife and unborn child. Joseph then moves to New York to make a clean break from Georgia and make his fortune as a writer. All goes well to start with, he falls in love again and becomes a published author before death comes into his life once again and events beyond his control take over.

This book is more than your average whodunnit. It is beautifully and thoughtfully written with prose that is a joy in itself to read. The pace of the book is langourously slow reflecting the heat and slow-pace of life in Georgia but there are enough twists and turns to keep the story moving. Joseph is a complex character - as bright and gifted people often are - he thinks deeply and doesn't let go and allows himself to be haunted by things happening around him that don't directly affect him. Why does Joseph make it his life's mission to catch the killer when those around him try to forget?

I loved this book and was gripped by it, especially in the third quarter of the book. I would love to give it 5 stars but there are too many niggling things that just stop it from being amazing. Some of the characters were not developed fully enough for me - the reader really gets to feel Joseph's relationship will Alex, the love and passion between them and the meeting of two bright minds and then the shock when it suddenly ends. However, we do not get the same feeling about Bridget, we don't see her personality or feel Joseph's love for her, we only get a feeling of oh goodness, not again when she leaves the story tragically too.

The book ends with the showdown between Joseph and the killer and there are enough clues to the killer's identity by the time you get there but also enough doubts to keep you thinking that there might be another twist. We are let down by the lack of motive for the killings and we haven't seen enough of the killer's character to give us a reason why he continued killing for so long. We also do not get a clear understanding of the thought processes that would have led to Joseph identifying the killer beyond doubt.

This is a very good book, exciting, horrific, tragic and poetic and I do recommend it. show less