the angels will not care...

[fajrdrako]

I was browsing my bookcase because I had, for once, time to read. I picked up a book I couldn't remember buying: The Angels Will Not Care by John Straley. I bought it in April, 2000. Was that when I was ill and depressed, and so don't now remember? Was it an impulse buy? I haven't heard of Straley, before or since.

It's about murder on a cruise ship in Alaska. Interesting setting. Interesting characters too, and convincing ones from all walks of life. The hero, Cecil Younger, is a paradigm I particularly like: tough and seriously depressed. Like many tough private eyes, he has a wonderfully intellectual girlfriend who was too good for him - and unlike the usual Susan Silverman crowd, I liked this one very much.

There were some lovely psychological bits - the relationship between the father and his son who was dying of AIDS; the troubled doctor; the artist who was trying to draw angels, and succeeding only in drawing dark parodies of angels.

But - and it was a big but - though the mystery was unusual and interesting, the climax was lacklustre and the resolution uninteresting.