A Quiet Belief in Angels

by R.J. Ellory

Book Overview

Just a teenager, Joseph becomes determined to protect his community from the killer, but he is powerless in preventing more murders-and no one is ever caught. Ten years later one of his neighbors is found hanging from a rope, surrounded by belongings of the dead girls; the killings cease, and the nightmare appears to be over. Desperate and plagued by everything he has witnessed, Joseph sets out to forge a new life in New York. But even there the past...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590203380
• ISBN13: 9781590203385
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

America Viewed from a Small Island

If you are willing to venture into extremely dark territory which makes you question many things, if you love the music of Virgil Thompson, Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein and the writing of Thomas Wolfe, Walt Whitman and John Dos Passos, and all those who speak of the vastness, wonder and beauty of America and of those who live simple rural lives, trying to earn enough to keep their families together, then I recommend this book to you. And who wrote it? The surprising answer is that it was written by an Englishman from Birmingham - England, not Alabama. Roger Jon Ellory never knew his father and his mother died when he was seven. He and his younger brother were sent to boarding school by his grandmother. She died when Roger was sixteen. He and his brother were all alone at that point. They survived however they could and were, at one point, arrested for stealing a chicken. They were sent to a reform school, which was very harsh. Knowing this about the writer gives an insight into his descriptions of being incarcerated and, also, his view that the world is not always a friendly place. Some have questioned why he writes about America. Just reading the book answers this question. He has an extraordinary feel for the vastness and the beauty of the country and for its comparative youth, which carries with it an as yet untarnished hope for a better future. This unique view of America is more easily appreciated, I believe, by someone who has grown up in a much smaller - and older - country. Now to the book itself: it deals with serial killings. (In this case, the worst kind because they are of little girls. The story opens in 1939 in rural Georgia, when the protagonist, Joseph Vaughan, is twelve years old. The blurb on the back of the cover says, '(He) hears of the brutal assault and murder of a young girl, the first in a series of killings that will blight the community over the next decade. Joseph and his friends are determined to protect Augusta Falls against the evil in their midst, and form The Guardians.' The book shows not only the effects of this evil on the community in general but also how it places a heavy shadow over Joseph's life. Eventually he moves away to New York (Brooklyn) and we experience some Wolfian scenes of Bohemian life. These stand out as a counterpoint to the heart of the book, which is the rural area he has left behind but inevitably gets pulled back to once more. There is more I could say about the plot but I really believe that experiencing it yourself allows for maximum impact. It would be hard to imagine that anyone, having finished this book, would remain unchanged in some way. I, who am basically an optimist, found myself thinking dark and gloomy thoughts while reading it. But this certainly didn't stop me from continuing to read. I could not have stopped. The book is dedicated to Truman Capote, obviously in homage to In Cold Blood. If you want to learn more about this and other books by

Beautiful

This book was a wonderful surprise. It had me from the open: "Rumor, hearsay, folklore. Whichever way it laid down to rest or came up for air, rumor had it that a white feather indicated the visitation of an angel. On the morning of Wednesday, July twelfth, 1939, I saw one, long and slender and unlike any kind of feather I'd seen before. It skirted the edge of the door as I opened it, almost as if it had waited patiently to enter, and the draft from the hallway carried it into my room." And kept me reading with beautiful passages like this: "Love, I would later conclude, was all things to all people. Love was the breaking and healing of hearts. Love was misunderstood, love was faith, love was the promise of now that became hope for the future. Love was a rhythm, a resonance, a reverberation. Love was awkward and foolish, it was aggressive and simple and possessed of so many indefinable qualities that it could never be conveyed in language. Love was being." Joseph Vaughn's childhood is marred by murder of several local girls, all presumably at the hands of a single serial killer. These events color not only his childhood, but his entire life as he becomes obsessed with the crimes. He can't seem to catch a break, his life rocked time after time by tragedy. A gifted writer, Joseph eventually moves to New York City in an attempt to leave it all behind, but it's not that easy. This was a really sneaky mystery. Ellory drops little breadcrumbs every so often, and just when you think you know what's going on, things take a turn. I was wrong about who the killer was, yet it all made sense in the end. The setting is also worked into the story very well... the attitudes of people due to World War II play a significant part, as well as the small town southern setting. This is Ellory's fifth book, and I can't wait to track down the others. I am a new fan.

Literary Fiction at its Finest

Thrown into the deep end at the beginning, there are brief flash-forwards to when adult Joseph kills a man in Brooklyn and calmly tells of looking at life ooze away. However, the bulk of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS takes place in Georgia. This noir novel is told from the perspective of 12-year-old Joseph Vaughan after his father's death in 1939. Joseph has an unhealthy obsession with angels, which plays a major role in the story. Fictitious Augusta Falls is still in the throes of the Great Depression, an era of one-room schoolhouses and priggish schoolmarms. When his teacher, Alexandra Webber, asks who taught him to read, Joseph replies that his father "said you could stay in a one-room shack...the whole of your life, but you could see everywhere in the world...so long as you could read." She gives him a John Steinbeck collection and advises the aspiring writer "to write the truth as you see it, not as other people wish it to be seen." Author R.J. Ellory pens this novel as if it were crafted by his protagonist: it has a 1940s Southern feel with Steinbeck's influence and superfluous imagery of a teen who wants to impress adults with vocabulary and detail. However, reading and writing aren't the only things on the young boy's mind as murders begin piling up in his small town. Joseph forms a group of youths called "The Guardians" and personally promises his neighbor that he will look after her. Tragically, though, arson ends up taking her life. He makes it a personal mission to find who killed not only her, but the other nine young girls who were brutally murdered. When the presumed killer is found hanged, Joseph leaves Georgia feeling that he is free to write as he had yearned to do for so long. Fast forward to 1952 in a Brooklyn rooming house, where Joseph finds love and has published his first work. Although he has had much personal and professional success, Joseph discovers a white feather, a harbinger of death. But it turns out that his pregnant bride-to-be is the one who is brutally murdered. And to make matters worse, he cannot account for the two-hour time frame when she was killed. Joseph is incarcerated for life but freed after 13 years by the Supreme Court. He forfeits generous revenue from his published works and seeks only to go back to Augusta Falls to find the killer. Realizing who is behind the murders (a tally that has now reached 39), Joseph returns to Brooklyn and waits for the perpetrator in a hotel room. "I am an exile, and no one knows I'm here except the man I'm waiting for. And he will never come. Never intended to come. Made a promise and then broke it. Just like the promise I made to Elena. Broken words. Broken oaths. Worthless vows. This is who I have become, and I have created this for myself. No one else has done this but me. No one else but me." And when Joseph finally confronts the killer, the stage is set for a climax like you wouldn't believe. All is not as it appears in this work. Ellory throws in enough twists an

A UK best seller and US readers are missing out!

Ellory weaves a strong plot, well developed characters, and descriptive setting in AQBIA. With rural Georgia as the backdrop of this crime thriller, the main character, Joseph, comes of age and is haunted by and suspected of brutally murdering several girls. What's intriguing is that the author, a Brit, beautifully details the South and its characters. Here, Ellory is at his best. It is difficult to imagine an author accurately painting the setting from thousands of miles away. Also, his characterizations are convincing while not being stereotypical. One word describes his work: authentic. Although I was not "moved" when the main character's love interest dies, this subplot was minor and did not detract from the novel's pace and suspense. This book is a major best seller in the UK. US readers are missing out.

Re-A Review from a Fellow Writer

Hi it's Steve here. I recommended this amazing book to Writer Carrie King via her website and this is her e-mail back to me after she had read it! Wow! I was shocked to find this awesome writer is not American! I love the setting of this intriguing story: the deep South: Augusta Falls, Georgia and opening in 1939. R.J.'s vocabulary, his description, even his timing, is so, so American, so reminiscent of Steinbeck. He made me cry on page 44 and I am sure most who are writers or aspire to be, will do so, too! To anyone I would say, "Get reading....I guarantee you won't be able to put it down!" Roger Ellory is a force to be reckoned with.....I am quite sure he will conquer the literary world and one day he will be listed up there alongside the All Time Greats. A Master Writer! Thanks for recommending it to me, Steve, Carrie King