Just Another Angel by
Mike Ripley
pbk out August 06
(Telos Publishing)
at £9.99
A collector's item this, the first Mike Ripley novel now re-published after
eighteen years. Mike, Britain's funniest crime-writer, starts with a
comprehensive foreword, explaining how the book came to be written,
putting the blame on Dr John Grant, a.k.a Jonathan Gash, the creator of
'Lovejoy' – for which M. Ripley later wrote some of the scripts for the
classic television series.
This prototype introduces Fitzroy Maclean Angel, a well-educated but
somewhat dissolute Jack-the-Lad, who exists frugally in East London on
pub gigs as a trombonist, marginally-legal jobs transporting dodgy goods
and sometimes moon-lighting as a fake cabby in his de-licensed black
London taxi, called Armstrong. The other main character is Springsteen,
his evil cat, though in the Foreword, the author ascribes the acceptance of
this first novel to the cat-loving editor taking a fancy to the beast.
The action takes place in the late '80s, when 'the country was in the grip
of Thatcherism – greed was good and all anyone could talk about was
their latest pay rise or where their next BMW was coming from'!
To be frank, the plot-line is a bit hazy, but that is of little consequence, as
what matters is the five gags-per page that makes reading a Ripley such a
delight. Mike is an incorrigibly funny man, even when he tries to be
serious.
Angel fancies a smart woman seen at one his gigs and gives her an lift
home in his illegal taxi, whereupon she, being out of funds, pays him in
kind. It turns out that she is the wife of a nasty South London criminal
and dire consequences follow when the husband goes over the wall from
Pentonville or some such hostel.
The story leaps from place to place, including a female peace camp,
Angel's weird digs in Hackney and several involuntary visits to police
stations. But as said, the plot is really a scaffolding around which to wrap
the author's deliciously irreverent prose, which has twice earned him the
CWA's Last Laugh Award.
This first novel was before Angel settled down with the rich and beautiful
Amy, familiar to readers of the umpteen later Angel books. Springsteen
and Armstrong have survived the passage of years and it is interesting to
read this account of their origins.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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Just Another Angel by
Mike Ripley
