A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If Steinbeck had ever written a crime novel, it might have been as good as this. If Richard Russo’s name had been on the cover, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised at the skill and energy within.
Ellory’s lyrical prose, elegant narrative structure, mystical imagination and sheer humanity raised the bar for crime genre fiction. The pace of the novel is perfect, a slow, inevitable arc from a bloody beginning to a bloody end with a long shadow of doom and destruction that darkens even the brightest moments of love and passion in this intensely sad book.
Mike Finn's Fiction 