Angel in the House

Fitzroy Maclean Angel #13

by Mike Ripley

Streetwise hero Roy Angel, faced with parenthood and a move to the country, has to do the unthinkable - and get a job. To make sure he does this, his partner, fashion diva Amy May, buys him a share in Rudgard & Blugden Confidential Investigations, previously an all-female private detective agency. Angel's first client is a millionaire chemist trying to plug a leak of stolen botox - the "pretty poison" from his supposedly secure laboratory. While trying to solve an impossible crime, Angel is distracted by a vivacious redhead with a passion for Salsa dancing; a jovial Russian sailor besotted by old East German cars fit for the junkyard; an estate agent with a crush on Audrey Hepburn; some very strange goings-on in country houses; and a redundant KGB officer trying to retrain as a gangster! But that's not the main problem. Which brave soul is going to tell Angel's fearsome hippy mother that she's soon to be a grandmother?

Genres: Crime

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mike Ripley is the author of the award-winning 'Angel' series of comedy thrillers which have twice won the CWA Last Laugh Award. It has been said that he 'paints a picture of London Dickens would recognise' and that 'he writes like the young Len Deighton, wierd and wonderful information and very, very funny'. Described as 'England's funniest crime writer' (The Times), he is also a respected critic of crime fiction, writing for the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times and the Birmingham Post among others.

Reviews

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in May 2007, and updated in November 2024.

This was my first read of one of the Angel novels, though it is in fact the twelfth featuring the feckless detective. In Angel in the House, Angel is faced with something that he has always tried to avoid: he has to get a job. Luckily (though not from his point of view) his partner Amy May buys a stake in a private detective agency, so that is where he goes to work. Soon he becomes involved in a bizarre case involving suspected missing Botox, as well as investigating potentially haunted mansions in South Cambridgeshire.

Most comic crime fiction is heavily indebted to Hammett and Chandler, whose hard boiled style is easy to parody (though not so easy to parody well). The Agatha Raisin books parody Christie and other stalwarts of the traditional murder mystery, but I find them unbearable. Angel is not really a detective from either school; in fact, he'd much rather not be a detective at all, and just be supported by Amy. So he blunders around, making inappropriate jokes, and getting into awkward situations. Generally, this is funny, though he is sometimes exasperatingly feckless. The balance is towards the right direction, however.

As a crime novel, the plot is not terribly difficult to untangle, particularly the hauntings. The mechanism behind the botox thefts is ingenious, however, and the central characters will keep even the most cynical genre fan happy through the novel. I wouldn't want to read several of them in quick succession, but I will look out for them in future, after a suitable interval.

Update 2024: Having now read many more Angel novels in the 17 (!) years since my original review, I'm much more attuned to the book and found it much funnier. Rating also upgraded from 3 to 4.

[Elizabeth Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A con man is strong-armed by his wife to get a "real" job and finds he has to learn how to be a detective, not to mention reporting in to a boss each day, writing up reports, keeping receipts for expense reports, etc.! Poor Roy Angel nearly makes a mess of things in this 13th installment of the series, but somehow manages to solve the mystery of missing botox and debunks the reports of ghosts in an old manor up for sale for an unduly long time. And in the process finds a home for his family outside London without hardly working at it. This book was full of wonderful, wry Brit humor and I really enjoyed it. Must seek out the rest of the series.

[Readelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got more love from me than it really deserved because of the setting.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read.