Manipulated by his mother into helping out with a chaotic archaelogical dig in rural Suffolk, Angel is surprised when his fashion-designer wife Amy insists on accompanying him. In charge of the dig is an elderly eccentric apparently convinced that he will find the remains of Queen Boudica’s royal mint on his own property. However, there have been sinister accidents on site and several diggers have been attacked – and, with his usual knack for finding trouble, Angel gets drawn into investigating a mystery far more recent than the Iron Age …
Telos Publishing is proud to present another in its range of reissues of Mike Ripley’s acclaimed series of comic crime novels – complete with a new, specially-written introduction by the author.
‘Ripley is everything I hate in other writers. His plotting, characterisation, dialogue and scene setting are superb, and he is laugh-aloud funny. I am insanely jealous.’ – R D Wingfield.
324pp. B-format paperback novel.
ISBN 978-1-84583-889-8
Published 13 August 2014
Unused draft cover:

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.