That Angel Look
First Published: 1997
Published By: Do Not Press
Angel Number: 8
Personal Favourite: 1
Quotable Quote: True love may be blind, but good sex sends you cross-eyed.
The Backstory
Angel lands himself a job as driver and some time consultant for a group of up and coming fashion designers.
It should be an easy life, but when a photographer acquaintance winds up dead in a bizarre murder, the finger is pointed at all four of them.
If that wasn't enough to deal with, he has to prevent war breaking out in Brick Lane.
The Webmaster's Take
In conversation with a cab driver called Bill, not a musher, a mini cab driver in North Wales, who drove a very uncomfortable Citroen Xsara Picasso; despite my bum getting unwanted massages on occasion, due to the Citroen sensing every bump in the road, he's saved my life on a few dark evenings on the way home from work, he Top Bloke...I digress. As I was saying, Bill loves talking about his job, and we got into conversation once about Women Who Go Round In Threes.
Solomon (another Top Bloke) said that a three braided cord is not easily broken, he was talking about marriage, but bear with me here OK?, he could easily have been talking about WW-GRIT. Now, you know the good ol' urban myth about women who go everywhere in pairs - there is always a pretty one and a plain one - the pretty one knows that she is made more pretty, and therefore will attract more potential partners, by her plain friend. The plain friend hopes to pick up the pretty one's rejects. Sexist? Unrealistic? Maybe, you decide.
But add another girl to the equation, you get an altogether different scenario. They are not on the pull, they are on the piss take. Any one of them will bitch about one of the others behind their back, or even to their face - but woe betide anyone who bitches about any of the others to any of their faces. Any fella who wants to get near to any one of them, has to run the gauntlet of getting past not just one, but two others. If they are all reasonable looking, they have the potentially lethal decision of choosing just one of them, risking possible castration by one or both of the rejects, or they could take all three, if they are suicidal. He is best cornering just the one of them, alone. A Mission Improbable. And no, this is definitely not sexist - believe me, I've seen it in action for real
.
Girls in threes, Bill says, make his job more fun, and besides, he knows how to handle them. After all, he's married, with kids, so no chance of even considering it, and besides, he wants to live to enjoy his retirement. All the boys want to talk about is football, and he always asks them to guess which football team he supports and the answers can take him to Liverpool and beyond; he supports a local football team which they would probably never guess. If there is a piss take gene, he and Angel must have swum the same pool.
Oh yes, That Angel Look. I was thinking one day, if it hadn't been for the book, this site would have been called Angel's Share, and I thought, neat name, Angel's Share of 82% of the web that isn't read. Passing thought only.
When I first started reading this one - it was the 7th I had read - I was somewhat bemused and frustrated by the style. It has been done in "snapshots" and not necessarily in order, except towards the end. The novel does not commence at the very beginning of the tale, but shortly afterwards, fast forwards a couple of weeks into the future, goes back again, back to the future once more, then further, then back again....I have to admit I was getting a little dizzy, and a little bit, dare I say it, pissed off.
But I kept reading, and then, just as gradually as Roy did in the novel, I fell in love, to a point that no other Angel book, and there were a further 8, came anywhere close to knocking it off its well deserved number one spot.
It was apparently to be the last Angel book. Now, there are lots of ways to kill off a character without actually killing them. In Neighbours, if they haven't argued about their contract, which means automatic family friendly death, they send them to Brisbane, in fact it seems that the whole city must be full of the cast and their offspring. Anyway - so you want to finish a series without killing off your main character, cause he's a lovable rogue, you may want to do the odd "comeback", and besides it's written in the first person so would look distinctly odd. ("Hello God. Anywhere to perch my B flat trumpet? I'll sit on that cloud over there and I take requests.". Doesn't cut it really, does it?) And there's nowhere far enough that you could send him without being accused of abuse and neglect. So, you have a gigolo who's always scraping around for the green stuff so he can feed the cat and pay the rent (in that order). So you pair him off. With someone rich. Or potentially rich. Sorted. Time to go dig up some dead Romans.
Uh, no.
The odd reviews that I have read on this book seem to follow a common theme: somewhat chauvinist. So what do we have? A victim so slimy you want to wash your hands before, during and after you've met him, a hero that has perhaps met his match in the form of the Terrible Trio, who make Girl Power look like a WI tea party and a sub-heroine who is by far the most intelligent in her clan. Sexist? I don't think so.
But it's not all proverbial sharp trouser suits and shoulder pads. At least three of the girls have their sights set on Angel, and one of them is far more dangerous than even he could have imagined. The female of the species is indeed more deadly than the male, especially where sex is concerned. If that wasn't bad enough, his collar is not just being felt, it's being manhandled through the 60 degree washing machine cycle.
I'm surprised that the other, surviving one of the three, hasn't come back to exact some sort of nasty revenge on Mr Angel, as she surely must be out by now.
The book has been woefully ignored by the UK, maybe crime novel fans like their books a little more cutting edge; but this is comedy crime, and you can't get much better.
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