Angels of the Flood: A Novel

by Joanna Hines

An art conservator heads back to Florence, to solve the mystery of a painting and a crime that still haunts her

In 1966, when Florence’s Arno River unleashed its worst flood in four hundred years, killing people and destroying much of the city, the teenage Kate Holland felt compelled to act. She became one of the “angels of the flood,” helping to restore Florence, and in the process she fell in love with the city—as well as with David, one of her fellow volunteers. She also forged a transformative friendship with a local girl, Francesca. But a shattering accident left Francesca dead and forced Kate to return to England. Now a successful art conservator, Kate is plunged back into her Florentine past. David turns up at one of her lectures, and she confides to him that an anonymous dealer has been sending her some unsettling paintings. The works have been altered in ways that suggest a message for Kate specifically. For instance, a female figure is overpainted with blood that echoes Francesca’s fatal injury. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, Kate and David set off for Italy. Francesca’s family had dark secrets, and their power lingers. Are the signals in the paintings a trap, or a cry for help?

352 pages, ebook

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[The Cats’ Mother · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angels of the Flood is a mystery thriller set in Italy that was published in 2004, by an author who is new to me. I picked it up at a charity book fair in 2012 and it’s been sitting on my “to read” bookcase ever since. I selected it somewhat at random as I needed a quick treebook to read before Book Club. I wasn’t expecting much, thanks to the snide and snobby 1-star review sitting in first place here on GR, but ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

In November 1966 the river Arno broke its banks, flooding the famous city of Florence and engulfing priceless artistic treasures, many of which were destroyed. In the aftermath, young people from around the country and the world arrived to help with the clean-up, and became known as the Mud Angels - or more poetically as the Angels of the Flood. Kate Holland is a British seventeen-year old who has just left school and is looking for adventure when she arrives in Florence. The work is hard but the parties are wild and she soon makes friends, including beautiful but troubled Italian-American Francesca. Then Francesca is killed in a terrible accident. Decades later, Kate, now a well-known art restoration specialist, is sent a painting with a coded message summoning her back to Italy, where she must revisit the past to find out what really happened to her friend - but someone is prepared to kill to keep their secret…

I had never heard of the Florence floods, but a quick Google search confirmed that they are a real historical event, and the Mud Angels were a recognised part of the recovery. The dual timeline and shifting perspectives worked quite well here as we are introduced to Kate in the present, then taken back to meet her as an idealistic but hedonistic and foolhardy teenager. We know from the start about the accident but not any details so the scenes leading up to it were nail-bitingly tense. There are lots of hints about what has made Francesca so fragile, but it’s not the obvious, and I didn’t guess the twists along the way. I’m not sure about the ending - I will concede it did tip over into molto melodrama - with a bit too much left open for my taste, but overall this was an entertaining and interesting read.

[Wendell · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Angels of the Flood* is the kind of book that the word "potboiler" was invented to describe. I probably shouldn't be amazed that Simon & Schuster gave Hines a contract for this, um, work, but -- color me naive -- I am. Full of the kind of clichés of Italian culture that you'd expect from someone trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, this book can satisfy only those readers for whom fiction has essentially the same function as a bowl of potato chips. Dialogue isn't Hines' forte, and the conversations here (esp. when she's trying to render Italian in English) are decidedly on the trite side. What's worse, the plot is, in a word, unbelievable. Though the early pages may hook you with their promise of an intriguing mystery to be unraveled (Hines suggests that forged paintings, an art restorer with a tragic past, and a not-entirely-explained death might have something to do with the story she's telling), you will be tempted to hurl this book out the window when the "secret" is ultimately revealed. I bought *Angels of the Flood* in large part because (I'll confess) I got hooked on the set-in-Italy format after *Angels and Demons* (which this book does not, in its wildest dreams, resemble), and I thought Hines might actually have done some research into the Florence/Pisa flood of 1966 or into art restoration. But in turns out she didn't. You learn that museums in Florence were filled with mud when the flood waters receded and that volunteers used talcum powder to absorb water from the walls of buildings -- which is the sort of colorful "detail" you'll find if you spend about 10 minutes researching the flood on the internet. Missing is any real sense of "setting"; the book unravels (rather than develops) in and around Florence, but aside from the usual banalities about "beauty" and "art" and "skies where you can see the stars," you could be in Montenegro for all it matters that the book is set in Italy. Similarly, the fact that the main character is an art restorer is likewise an utter coincidence; Hines could just as well have made her a plumber. Characterizations are daubed in with a trowel, with exactly the subtlety you'd expect, and I'm not sure why the Italian Anti-Defamation League isn't burning this book for its stereotypical, sixteenth-of-an-inch-deep representations of Italians. All in all, a disappointment. I'd like my money back.

[Svjetlana Tesla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neobican triler,kolika je cijena gubitka svog imena,kada Kejt dolazi u Firencu ne sluti da ce pronaci davno umrlu prijateljicu Francesku iza identiteta njene sestre Simone,da li je ista vrijedno gubitka same sebe i svojih snova ...

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book while on holiday and it was fine as a holiday read.

The first chapter was great and I was looking forward to enjoying a gripping mystery. Unfortunately, the rest of the book didn't really deliver as promised.

The plot line was fairly predictable and the characters a bit flat and under developed.

It was o.k. but don't expect too much.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4 stars.. thus book made me realise I like chick-lit!!!
Very clever. Very enjoyable

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was on my to-be-read list for a while. And I think I should have left it there. The plot seemed to spiral out of control and have far too much melodrama to be at all credible.

Kate Holland returns to her past...and events that happened in Florence in 1967 influence what is happening to her today. I would have liked the mystery in this book much more if it didn’t take some foolish twists that did nothing more than to make things seem too sensational. In fact, when I reached the point in the book where one of these plot twists takes place I had to take a few minutes to rant and rave about it. Then I returned to reading...just because I was too far into the book to stop. This isn't a book i'll be recommending.

[Kirsty Darbyshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice surprise. I picked it up at the library but wasn't at all sure I'd like it. Which is one of the nice things about libraries. And I found I did like it a lot. The story is about Kate Holland who, as a teenager, goes to Florence to help clear up after the 1967 floods. Most of the story is told in backstory when Kate returns to Italy thirty years later. Most gripping throughout though I thought the ending was a bit weak and could have been more convincing. Nice to find a good new author, I feel like I've been lacking new people to read lately.

[Desiree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts when an art conservator/restorer gets some pictures that have been deliberately vandalised and altered with some horrible details.
It takes her back to the time she spend in Florence during the early months of 1967 when she was helping to clean up the devastating mess left by the flooding of the Arno in November 1966.

It is hard to qualify this book, but the term that comes most to mind is a slow psychological thriller.
I realy liked this book.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual story of how a traumatic past event can impact on your future life, and when the details of the event turn out to be incorrect there eventually must be disclosure and hopefully an accounting. There's a domineering and greedy family willing to use their daughters to secure their lavish life style and social position. Difficulties arise when one can no longer bear to live a lie and reaches out to a friend from her youth for help.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I didn't really finish this book -- I flipped to the end to see if I had solved the mystery and I had so I'm done. I wasn't enjoying the story, actually.

[LeAnn Martinez · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and rather quick read.

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo przyjemny klimat włoskiego miasteczka