Angel in the House by
Mike Ripley
pbk out September 06
(Allison Busby)
at £6.99
What can be said about Angel that hasn't already been said? Well, I'm going
to have to try, or there will be a big white space here on the page. No point in
regurgitating all that stuff about 'rip-roarious' Ripley, or the sharp and witty edge of
his writing, or the superb nature of his characterisation, and the way he makes you
laugh out loud. We know all that. Angel in the House looks like the thirteenth in the
series – which I cleverly deduced by counting the number of titles on the back of the
title page, and adding one – and thank heavens for their continued existence. There
seems to have been a shaky history around number eight – That Angel Look – when
HarperCollins dumped the series. More fool them. Do-Not-Press published it, and
Ripley "killed" Angel off by arranging him to be married. How could a happy-go-
lucky, taxi-driving, trumpet-playing, rogue of an accidental private eye survive that?
Well, he obviously did, because here he is again. And now he's about to be a father,
and his partner, Amy, has convinced him they have to move out of London. On top of
all that, Fitzroy Maclean Angel has to find a job.
Naturally, it's Amy who sets him up as a PI in the firm she has bought called
Rudgard and Blugden Confidential Investigations. Until now it has been an all-
female set-up, but no longer. To add insult to injury, Amy tells Angel he can't have
his black cab outside the house if they are to sell easily. Angel can't believe it when
Drunken Duncan the mechanic organises him a Peugeot 206 – Gay Car of the Year.
Wrestling with his boss Veronica, with eager, twin-like graduate colleagues, and the
vagaries of the expense account, Angel gets his first case. Botox is disappearing from
Tyler Pharmaceuticals, and the boss wants to know how. With the help of Frank
LeMarquand, spy techie extraordinaire, Angel finds out that one of the staff, Doctor
Cassandra Quinn, has a salsa-dancing Russian boyfriend. That, and the fact that she is
a vivacious redhead, inspires him to follow her. At the same time, Angel squeezes in
a visit to an estate agent's to keep Amy happy, and gets embroiled in detecting why
strange psychic goings-on seem to be preventing some houses being sold.
Sounds mad? Don't worry, it is. This is Angel's hilarious world, that he has
to share with people who have never heard of George Orwell, Mein Kampf, or Fitzroy
Maclean. It's enough to make him a Grumpy Old Man, but throughout it all, Angel
preserves his wry humour. Even when his life peer of a father has a heart attack just
prior to marrying a 19 year-old topless model. There I go again –how can one story
contain so many hilarious threads, you ask? Well, work out for yourself how to link a
rubber corset, an export market in Trabants, a length of rope, and a lead pipe, and
you'll be there. Where's that? Read Angel in the House and find out for yourself.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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Angel in the House by
Mike Ripley
