R.J. Ellory, A Quiet Belief in Angels

'I am an exile' states the ill starred narrator of Ellory's homage to To Kill a Mocking Bird, "A Quiet Belief in Angels". We are in a Southern small town scratching at the door of childhood innocence, privately listening to a narrator weighed down by the grim lessons of the past. Ellory takes care to detail the details of this past, mingling references to the wider world of the Second World War with the glimpses of daily impoverished Southern Life. Joseph Vaughan, the hero of this Richard and Judy recommended read, falls in love with his teacher and also has to face the uneasy sexual revelation that his widowed mother is sleeping with his German neigbour in return for the odd dollar or two each week. In the midst of this rites of passage narrative, we encounter murders most horrid; a serial child killer is loose, and the close community has to face the terrible revelation that it might be one of them.

All this sounds perhaps familiar and of course all stories repeat other stories and are haunted by echoes of others. Yet Ellory renders his narrative more ponderous and self-consciously 'regretful' than any novel I can remember. If you don't spot the killer before breakfast then you are probably being too distracted by pool side eye candy ...and all joy to you as this novel irritated me with its 'nostalgic' tone and unconvincing, self-condemnatory narration that wallowed in cliche and heavy handed signals of 'fate.'

Interestingly I suppose, it reveals the imaginative truth that intimacy cannot just be presumed created textually, especially through the indiscriminate littering of insinuating italics and wordly 'wise' gulity retrospect:

'How I sat across from Dearing, a man who had walked through my childhood with me, and the way his face sort of folded around the eyes, a sense of defeat, a ghost upon his shoulders, and the tone of his voice as he said...'( p.154)

Look at the weight of meaning engendered via the word 'How'. We hear the sigh of regret and then we are 'programmed' to acknowledge wistfully with the unlucky narrator, that retrospect gives shape to the chaos of life. But do we 'see' Dearing at all? Is he present in this word of sighs? And why does the final clause peter out into ellipsis? Of course we know( sigh) that Joseph 'knows' more as he writes now, than he ever could know at the time( sigh) and that such revelation( sigh) is best told through detail that privileges weary. blighted characterisation. Unless a character is 'real' to the reader before they are to be made dramatically 'useful' , then a writer cannot make his/him real through such heavy handed signposting. It's just posturing and I found myself trying to look behind these set pieces, blinking to see if anything or anyone was really there.

Guess what? Not a glimpse!

In 1939 in Augusta Falls, Georgia, someone rapes and murders a twelve year old child. The classmates are stunned but especially affected is Joseph Vaughan. When he turns fifteen raised by his widow mom, he remains haunted by the incident and violent death in general. He persuades other boys his age to form the Guardians to prevent future assaults.

Over the next few years, the Guardians fail to stop brutal attacks as kids are abducted. A depressed Vaughan leaves Georgia relocating to Brooklyn, where he hopes to make it with his other goal to become a writer. However, a murder in the Big Apple ties back to Augusta Falls bringing him full circle.

Although there are too many minor subplots over complicating a fabulous character study of a seemingly OCD youth; A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS is a terrific tale of a Georgian fixated for decades with brutal killings especially by serial killers. Fans will appreciate how deep author RJ Ellory takes the reader inside the mind of Joseph without slowing down the narrative. He is the key holding the tale together as the focus of the story line. As a senior citizen he connects the deadly dots between New York and Georgia but even then Mr. Ellory continues digging through the layers of the soul of his beleaguered frustrated hero. This is a super look at a caring person struggling with his inability to prevent violence.

Harriet Klausner