Angel City (Angel Series # 5)

London in the early 1990s; supposedly the New Age ‘caring ’90s’. But the streets, it turns out, are not paved with gold, but covered with the homeless living in sleeping-bags and cardboard boxes, and often littered with a far more dangerous form of flotsam. For Angel, the city divides into several layers of underworlds and sub-cultures: callous crime and corruption, the growing drug culture, the seedier side of the gay scene, the young and homeless. There is also a more literal underworld where the role-playing game of Dungeons and Dragons can shift from fantasy to real violence at the flick of a wizard’s wand … But most serious of all is that Angel is down on his luck and flat broke. The situation is critical. So critical, he might even have to get a job…

‘… enough successful one-liners to keep a television comic going until retirement. Not many crime novels cause one to laugh aloud. This is one of them.’ – T J Binyon, Daily Telegraph

‘… the usual excellent wisecracking … [as Angel] takes his – and society’s – revenge for two different, linked crimes in a sad, bad world with great guile.’ – John Coleman, Sunday Times

‘Hugely funny, with a catch in the laughter; politicians should steer clear of the talented Mr Ripley as he cuts through the fluff of the Caring Society.’ – Christopher Wordsworth, The Observer

‘Angel City, featuring the reprobate ultra-streetwise specialist in smart one-liners Fitzroy Maclean Angel, is a lot more sombre than its predecessors. That is not to say it lacks the exuberant, laugh-aloud fun and inventiveness of the others; but there is in addition an edge and an anger that were not there before … and an authentic feel for the sub-currents of the underworld.’ – Marcel Berlins, The Times

‘A welcome return for a writer who is really funny.’ – Allan Laing, Glasgow Herald

‘… Angel, the bad boy who always comes good.’ – Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

‘The speed and exuberance of one-liners make it irresistible.’ – Matthew Coady, Guardian

‘Comic crime writing isn’t easy, but Ripley’s Angel novels are as witty as they are deftly plotted. Ripley’s latest is as boisterous and inventive as ever.’ – Philip Kerr, Time Out

‘An abundance of comedy keeps this novel spiritedly off the rails.’ – Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement

Another of Telos Publishing’s reissues of celebrated British author Mike Ripley’s series of comic crime novels featuring Fitzroy Maclean Angel.

135pp. A5-format paperback novel.
ISBN 978-1-84583-056-4
Published 31 May 2011 (Out of Print)

202pp. B-format paperback novel.
ISBN 978-1-84583-168-4
Published 18 January 2021

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Ripley is the author of 19 novels, including the award-winning Angel series of comedy thrillers, a dozen short stories and the non-fiction memoir Surviving A Stroke. He was a scriptwriter on the BBC series Lovejoy and the crime fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph and the Birmingham Post, reviewing more than 950 novels over 18 years. In the 1990s he was the co-editor, with Maxim Jakubowski, of the three Fresh Blood anthologies, showcasing new crime-writing talent such as Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Ken Bruen and Denise Mina. He has appeared at many literary festivals and conventions, developed a creative crime writing course for Cambridge University and devised and produced ‘An Audience With …’ stage shows for Colin Dexter and Minette Walters.

After a 25-year career in journalism and public relations, latterly for The Brewers’ Society, he became an archaeologist specialising in Romano-British sites in East Anglia until he suffered a stroke at the age of 50. He sat on the government’s Stroke Strategy Committee and currently supports both the Stroke Association and the Blood Pressure Association.

He writes the monthly column Getting Away With Murder for Shots Magazine, is part of the obituary writing team at the Guardian, and is the series editor for the imprints Top Notch Thrillers and Ostara Crime. Working with the Margery Allingham Society, he completed the novel left unfinished on the death of Youngman Carter in 1969, which was published in 2014 as Mr Campion’s Farewell. A second ‘continuation’ to feature Allingham’s famous detective, Mr Campion’s Fox, is published in 2015.