Mike Ripley - Page 1
First British Edition Allison & Busby (2006) |
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Angel's Share
Roy Angel is slowly adjusting to the pressures of working at Rudgard & Blugden Confidential Investigations, although his Raymond Chandler ‘training manuals’ still haven’t reconciled him to going to work every day.
It would seem that Angel could take it easy with his latest case however; finding the retired Mr Ellrington’s long lost love shouldn’t be too demanding, should it? Handling his partner Amy May, fashionista turned fearsome, nesting mother-to-be, as well as his ailing father and his Page 3 girlfriend, might be another matter though.
From meeting Huddersfield’s very own Double-O-Seven, to getting entangled in a shoot out where the OAPs are acting like kids, Angel’s latest caper possesses a cast of characters and indefatigable humour which rightly makes Mike Ripley the King of Comedy Crime.
‘The outrageous, rip-roarious Mr Ripley is an abiding delight…’ Colin Dexter
‘I never read Ripley on trains, planes or buses. He makes me laugh and it annoys other passengers.’ Minette Walters
‘He writes like the young Len Deighton. Street wisdom, weird and wonderful information and very, very funny.’ Michael Dibdin
‘If laughter is the best medicine, Mike Ripley’s Angel novels should be on National Health prescription.’ Val McDermid
‘Mike Ripley is the prime joker in the Brit crime pack.’John Connolly
‘Excellent, sharp and witty’ Paul Doherty
‘Master of the one-liner and the quips which we all wish we had thought of ourselves.’ Bernard Knight
‘His plotting, characterisation, dialogue and scene setting are superb and he is laugh aloud funny. I am insanely jealous.’ R D Wingfield
'England’s funniest crime writer' Marcel Berlins, The Times
Hardback
Allison & Busby
(2005) |
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Paperback - Allison & Busby (2006) |
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Angel in the House
See Review by
Ian Morson
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, his partner, fashion diva Amy May, buys him a share in Rudgard & Blugden Confidential Investigations, a previously all-female private detective agency.
In at the deep end (as usual), Angel’s first client is a millionaire chemist trying to plug a leak of stolen botox - the "pretty poison" used in cosmetic surgery - from his supposedly secure laboratory, where everything and everyone is constantly monitored by close-circuit television cameras.
Whilst trying to solve an impossible crime, Angel is distracted by a vivacious redhead with a passion for Salsa dancing; a jovial Russian sailor with a passion for old East German cars fit only for the junkyard; an estate agent with a passion for Audrey Hepburn; some very strange goings-on in country houses; and a redundant KGB officer trying to retrain as a gangster!
And Angel gets little support from his wonderfully dysfunctional family. His estranged father is (selfishly) admitted to hospital after a stroke and needs looking after, 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?
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First British Edition Constable (2002) |
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Angel Underground
Footloose, streetwise Fitzroy Maclean Angel can usually find trouble without looking too hard. But now he’s actually digging for it!
At the request of his eccentric mother, and against all his better instincts, Angel is persuaded to join a shambolic archaeological dig in rural Suffolk, privately financed by the even more eccentric Arthur Ransome Swallow, a local landowner who is obsessed with finding the royal mint of Queen Boudica.
From the outset Angel is sceptical about finding any buried treasure, but finding trouble proves dead easy. Not only is there something fundamentally wrong with the way the dig is being conducted but everyone connected with it is being threatened or hurt, including Angel, and it turns out that there is a lot more at stake than ancient history. Most worrying of all, Angel’s partner Amy insists on joining the dig to keep an eye on him - but it appears someone sinister is keeping an eye on her.
Chaos reigns on the site, making Boudica’s revolt against the Romans look like a National Trust family day out and some of the women in Angel’s life don’t need chariots with blades in the wheels to make their point!
Praise for Mike Ripley’s Angel series:
‘Hugely funny with a catch in the laughter; politicians should steer clear of the talented Mr Ripley as he cuts through he fluff of the caring society’ Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
‘Enough successful one-liners to keep a television comic going until retirement’ T.J. Binyon, Daily Telegraph
`Mayhem blends with gentle satire as the jokes and one-liners cascade among stalkers, internet villains and the obligatory femmes fatales. Farce of the highest caliber.’ Maxim Jakubowski, Time Out
‘’… like fine malt whisky, Angel is high proof and totally addictive.’ Jim Driver, Time Out
`Ebullient, knowing, and written with élan’ Times Literary Supplement
`High comedy quotient, splendid scams.. but [don’t] fail to notice what a seriously good writer Ripley is.’
Literary Review
`Exuberant, laugh-aloud fun and cleverness . . . but there is in addition, an edge and an anger.’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
| British Pbk Original - Do Not Press (2002) |
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Double Take
The Novel
The Screenplay
The first hilarious stand-alone novel from the creator of the best-selling Angel series, Double Take tells how to rob Heathrow Airport and get away with it. An `Italian job’ for the 21st century, with swearing in several languages - some of it translated - chillis as offensive weapons, but no Minis.
Double Take deconstructs one of Agatha Christie’s most audacious plots.
Double Take: The novel and the screenplay (the funniest caper movie never made) together in a single added-value volume.
| Paperback - Robinson (2002) |
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First British Edition Constable (2001) |
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Lights, Camera, Angel
Deadly danger stalks a film studio
Streetwise Jack-the-lad hero Roy Angel is bored; so his fashion designer partner Amy gets him involved in her latest project
- working on a big budget American movie being filmed at Pinewood Studios. With his unerring nose for trouble, Angel discovers that the mishaps dogging the set are anything but accidental. And the heart-throb tar of the film seems especially at risk, from two groups of fanatical fans and his own personal Internet stalker.
Angel is faced with life on the celebrity A-list, baby-sitting a handsome and talented film star and mingling with the sexiest of actresses. It's a dirty job and it's about to get dirtier, but somebody's got to do it.
'Mike Ripley's Angel series is back and taking no prisoners with one of the best hangover scenes in crime fiction' Ian Rankin
About The Author
Labelled ‘England’s funniest crime writer’ (The Times), Mike Ripley has twice won the Crime Writers’ Last Laugh Award for his Angel series of comic crime novels. He was a scriptwriter on the BBC series Lovejoy and has reviewed crime fiction for over 15 years, for the Daily Telegraph and the Birmingham Post. He currently writes a crime fiction gossip column, Getting Away With Murder, for the internet magazine www.shotsmaq.co.uk.
Recently, he has experimented with historical thrillers based on his experiences as an archaeologist, specialising in telling the fictional histories of great British losers such as Boudica and Hereward the Wake.
In 2003, at the age of 50, he suffered a stroke, paralysing him down the left side. He regained the use of his arm and hand by bashing away on an ancient typewriter and subsequently wrote of his experiences in Surviving A Stroke (White Ladder Press, 2006). He now works as a volunteer for the Blood Pressure Association and with younger stroke survivors and sits on the government's Stroke Strategy Steering Group.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
The Legend of Hereward
(Severn House,
2007)
Jan 07
Angel's Share
(Allison & Busby,
2006)
Nov 06
Boudica and the Lost Roman
(Severn House,
2006)
Angel in the House
(Allison & Busby,
2006)
Allison & Busby Pbk Sep 06
Angel on the Inside
(Constable,
2003)
Angel Underground
(Constable,
2002)
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Double Take
(Do Not Press Pbk,
2002)
Lights, Camera, Angel
(Constable,
2001)
Robinson Pbk Mar 02
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Bootlegged Angel
(Constable,
1999)
Robinson Pbk Mar 01
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Fresh Blood II
Short Stories
(Do Not Press,
1997)
Do Not Press Pbk 1997
That Angel Look
(Do Not Press,
1997)
Do Not Press Pbk 1997
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Family of Angels
(Harpercollins,
1996)
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Fresh Blood
Short Stories
(Do Not Press Pbk,
1996)
Angel Confidential
(Harpercollins,
1995)
Harpercollins Pbk 1996
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Angels in Arms
(
1991)
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Angel City
(
1991)
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Angel Hunt
(
1990)
Telos Pbk Aug 06
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Angel Touch
(
1989)
Telos Pbk Aug 06
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Just Another Angel
(
1988)
1988
Telos Pbk Aug 06
(Fitzroy Maclean Angel)
Angel's Share
by Mike Ripley
