A Quiet Belief In Angels

A Quiet Belief In Angels

3.79 of 5 stars 3.79  ·  rating details  ·  2,124 ratings  ·  340 reviews
Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, 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. Despite banding...more
Paperback, 403 pages
Published December 27th 2007 by Orion (first published 2007)
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Linda Parks
How exactly does a person move beyond a childhood filled with death? Death that seems to take form and follow... yet stay in front all the while, taunting with it's ability to control the very life one tries to escape?
This story begins in early 1900's with the death of a young boy's father - and what follows is a not so sweet serial killer mystery in surrounding Georgia country where everyone is suspect and one boy is destined to be haunted - if not hunted - forever.
I'll admit, I do like for s...more
Anne
A great big 5 STARS! Was blown away by this book, more by the style of writing than the story. Loved it!
My Inner Shelf
J’avais adoré Les Anonymes en octobre dernier, mais là c’est un cran au-dessus !
Encore plus sombre, Seul le silence est un roman avant tout psychologique, un genre de thriller sans réel suspens ni enquête. L’enquête menée pas Joseph Vaughan est principalement intérieure. Traumatisé par la Mort en général et celle de son père et des premières victimes en particulier, Joseph restera lié à une fatalité qui le hante depuis l’enfance. On est fasciné par l’enchainement des événements, on assiste au dé...more
Carrie
Apr 29, 2008 Carrie rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Eveyone who loves a thriller
Recommended to Carrie by: Roger Ellory
When I first started reading R.J.Ellory’s, A Quiet Belief in Angels, I thought,

"This is a con.....this can't be right.....this is a joke!"

I was convinced I was reading the works of the Master, Steinbeck.

Right from the opening lines, Ellory had me drawn in, taken under the influence of, and then totally intoxicated by his verbal skills and mastery over phrase, paragraph and perfect prose.

‘Sat at my window, chin almost touching the sill, and looked out into the night. Sky as hard as flint, the scu...more
Joni
Finally! I have finished this book. I thought I never would. It's SOOO slow-moving, but the prose is just brilliant. It reads like an enchanting, on-going poem. Don't read it for the story, read it for the words, because the latter far surpasses the former.
However it is a good story as well, slightly marred by the fact that there was no mystery in it for me as two of my relatives let slip the murderer's name in front of me before I started reading. People like that should be hanged.
But even th...more
Ron
Aug 06, 2011 Ron added it
I rarely read crime stories and most of the time I enjoyed this book, not to discover who was the serial killer [far too many novels about serial killers!] but in order to discover more about James Vaughan, the main character. I wanted to know if he was able to lay his own ghosts to rest, if he became a successful writer, if he found peace and contentment in his own relationships, whether he settled in Georgia or NYC, etc. I enjoyed much of this aspect of the novel and actually felt the search f...more
Darklady
É um livro interessante e com uma excelente narrativa, no entanto, creio que promete demais como thriller/policial e no fim não se aproxima disso. Breves descrições das meninas assassinadas e quase no final um momento ou outro que nos prende mas pouco mais que isso.
A história de vida da personagem principal é realmente surpreendente.
Blablabla Aleatório
“Rumores, boatos, folclore. Fosse qual fosse a forma como uma pluma branca pousasse ou descansasse, diziam que indicava a visita de um anjo. Na manhã de quarta-feira, 12 de julho de 1939, eu vi uma. [...]”

Naquele dia, a morte viera pela High Road e levara o pai de Joseph Vaugham, então com 12 anos. Foi a primeira visita dela à Augusta Falls na Geórgia, que Joseph se lembrava, porém não seria a última. Durante muitos anos ela viria pela High Road e levaria um anjo, uma menininha, e isso acarretar...more
Philip
I’ve been too busy to review the last few books I’ve read, but I want to make the effort and start again.

OK, so I picked this off the shelf mostly because of the title. It’s a nice, lyrical title and the backcopy said it was about a young group of boys who band together to discover who is killing little girls in their home town.

Sounds exciting, right?

I’m really torn about this book. On the one hand I think it’s really well written, even if the prose does get a little purple and overly descriptiv...more
aBeiLLe
J’ai lu ce roman d’une traite, en deux jours. C’est vrai que j’avais seulement que ça à faire… Et je dois avouer qu’avec le temps, il ne m’en restera pas grand-chose. Je l’ai lu depuis au moins 2 semaines et je dois avouer que déjà j’en ai perdu des bouts! Peut-être est-ce que c’est le contexte dans lequel je l’ai lu, va savoir…

Ce que je me rappelle par contre c’est l’émotion que j’ai ressenti durant ma lecture. Un mélange de compassion, de tristesse et de mélancolie. C’est rare un polar qui me...more
John Herbert
Read it and WEEP!!!!!!!!
Maybe or maybe not physically, but sure enough you'll weep inside at Joseph Vaughan's life in Augusta Falls and beyond.

Such a damaging life, as fear and outrageous violence takes away a normal upbringing, surrounding him with the ghosts of lost children, forever haunting his nightmares, as this beautifully crafted novel progresses.

You find yourself not so much identifying with the various characters in Augusta Falls, as becoming one of the townsfolk yourself, sharing thei...more
Ian Mapp
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Morticia Adams
This wouldn’t have been a bad crime thriller, had it not been ruined by the author’s apparent belief that he’s a much better writer than he actually is. He aims for the lyrical and poetic and falls flat because he doesn’t apparently understand the value of restraint or economy, and that constant repetition of an idea will diminish its impact.

I suspect that many editors today aren’t ruthless enough, and are too ready to swallow their authors’ self-hyping. A good editor might have suggested that...more
Tim
It's been awhile since I've encountered a narrator as tightly controlled by his author as Joseph Vaughan is in R.J. Ellory's "A Quiet Belief in Angels." There's a part of Joseph we can't quite get to, hidden by the cloak of enigma or numbness, and Ellory holds the reins relentlessly. But it's no wonder. In his story, spanning decades, Joseph is haunted by the brutal deaths of young girls in his small Georgia town. As the bodies of murdered and mutilated girls pile up in Augusta Falls and in surr...more
Lisa
Ellory captures the human experience in wonderfully poignant prose, as he details the events in the life of young Joseph Vaughn in rural Georgia; including the complete life altering affect a series of brutal murders had on his life and on the community.

More compelling, however, was the intertwining story line of the tragedy experienced by the losses to his immediate family. "Death came that day. Workmanlike, methodical, indifferent to fashion and favor, disrespecful of Passover, Christmas, all...more
David
A book with a lot of promise that fails miserably. What captured my attention in the beginning was the prose style...it was very evocative but then it came to drown in its over reliance on similes...that repeat themselves over and over and over.
The story itself started good but became unendingly episodic and cliche. The serial killer narrative and coming of age narratives never gelled. Characterizations were a little interesting but this was lost in a story that went nowhere, I stopped reading w...more
Belle
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
John Kues
The beginning of this story had me laughing out loud, and the dialog reminded me of "To Kill a Mockingbird". Remember the laxative Serutan, Natures spelled backwards was the ad? I do. He throws a little story about a man that liked the taste of Serutan and drank it all the time.

The author imagines the dead girls singing - "Two-six-nine...the goose drank wine..the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line...the line got broke...the mon-key choked...they all went to Heaven in a little rowboat......more
Mavis H
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Manda
Precis: A man's life is overshadowed by a brutal serial killer.

One of a chunk of books bought from The Book People that had all been included in Richard and Judy's 2008 Book Club. This is my personal favourite of the books included in the pack.

I really enjoy books that transport you to a different environment, and this book took me to middle America in the 40s. I enjoy a romance, as long as there is a tale behind it, and it is not too overblown, and the romances in this book were just down my s...more
Tony
Ellory, R. J. A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS. (2009). *****. I believe that this is one of the best-written books I have read in years. Although it is a crime novel, it reads as much like a family saga as anything else. It is set in a small town in Georgia, where a young boy, Joseph Vaughan, grows up as most other boys in such a setting, until a tragedy strikes and a young girl is found murdered and violated on the outskirts of town. The townspeople are aghast at such an event, and begin to look at ea...more
Donna
I don't read out and out mysteries very often and this book was a random grab at BEA. I just went, "free book!" *yoink* Thankfully it sounded interesting enough and it's set during a time period I normally like so what the hell, right?

It took a little bit to get into and the voice is a retroactive one - the grown up Joseph Vaughan telling the story as he grew up so it's a little strange to read a kid having such high end thoughts. But you get used to it. The only thing I found really annoying wa...more
Jaime
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...more
Marlène
What a disappointment.
Neither a thriller nor a crime novel, this was actually a very long, very slow, very self-centered piece of a pompous best seller... I still give 2 stars to the book because the man can show a gift with words (and I can't, ha!). Which I felt was showing off.

This is the second book I read by Mr Ellory and just the same as when I read A Simple Act of Violence, I was less than convinced by the knowledge this gentleman exhibits about what and who he is writing (apart from the...more
Kristina
A Quiet Belief in Angels was my introduction to RJ Ellory and my first impressions were certainly good. Now I'm not the most 'on the ball' when it comes to deducing who done it but in this case I got it right. This may suggest that the twist was too obvious but I really enjoyed the journey of getting there and for me the journey's what it's all about.

So the plot we have our leading man, actually we have our leading boy growing up in Georgia, dealing with the death of his father when a series of...more
Yas
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Ubik 2.0
Angeli Custodi e Angeli della Morte

Un libro indefinibile, un po' romanzo di formazione, un po' thriller, un po' storia degli USA visti e vissuti dalla profonda provincia del sud (Georgia) nell'arco di un trentennio dalla fine degli anni '30 in poi. Tutto questo (troppo, secondo alcuni) in una storia dall'andamento imprevedibile e proprio per questo avvincente, in cui si alternano soluzioni possibili e scenari appena abbozzati e subito superati dagli eventi.

Avevo da poco dichiarato la mia avvers...more
Mike Van Barneveld
Soms komen er boeken op je pad, waarvan je achteraf heel erg blij bent dat je ze gelezen hebt. Een stil geloof in Engelen van R.J. Ellory is er zo een. Wat een prachtig boek is dit. Het is wellicht een boek dat ik op basis van de voorkant niet zelf uitgezocht zou hebben, maar dat zou reuze zonde zijn geweest.

Ellory heeft in iets meer dan 400 pagina's een prachtig verhaal neergezet dat je van begin tot het einde in zijn greep houdt. Het heeft kenmerken van een goeie thriller maar ook van een nie...more
Geraldine O'Hagan
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Eek-louisville
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A Quiet Belief in Angels (Hardcover)
Seul le silence (Paperback)
Een stil geloof in engelen (Paperback)
A Quiet Belief in Angels (Paperback)
A Quiet Belief in Angels (ebook)

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Roger began his first novel on November 4th, 1987 and did not stop, except for three days when he was going through a divorce from his first wife, until July of 1993. During this time he completed twenty-two novels, most of them in longhand, and accumulated several hundred polite and complimentary rejection letters from many different and varied publishers.

He stopped writing out of sheer frustrat...more
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“Let the past be what it was, the present what it is, the future the best it can be.” 17 people liked it
“Love was the breaking and healing of hearts. Love was the 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, possessed of so many indefinable qualities that it could never be conveyed in language. Love was being.” 10 people liked it
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