A Quiet Belief in Angels

This book has taken me an age (ten days) to read. I know that ten days to some people may seem like a quick read, no I am not a skim reader (though with this book I almost wished I was) for me this is a long read and its sadly felt like a bit of a trudge. R.J.Ellory's novel ticked every box when Polly had this in her five choices for a previous Book Group. We didnt choose it as someone in the group said that it would give them nightmares, fair enough!!!!???? It had mystery and murder and we all know how I have gotten seriously into crime fiction in the last year or so in particular, sadly this book seems to be another blurb of bull. I am beginning to get really sick of these.

A Quiet Belief in Angels is the tale of a town and its people pulled apart by the murders of several young girls in the 1950’s (this was the part of the book I whizzed through the setting, the pace, everything was great) and one person who sets out to find the villain is Joseph Vaughan who at the time is a teenager who has had a pretty hard time of it with several tragedies and shocks befalling him in a short space of time. Eventually all seems solved when someone is found dead having admitted to the murders, only decades later they start again, and they seem to be haunting and following Joseph Vaughan once more, why?

See from the review of the story it sounds excellent, a perfect epic mystery, a fantastic setting of 1950’s and modern day America, a murder to solve the works. So why half way was it like wading through treacle (I don’t like treacle by the way)? I actually cant answer that. I suddenly out of nowhere got incredibly bored after about page 170, and having passed the 80 page rule felt I must continue and in places it picked up pace and redeemed itself falling flat again for a hundred pages or so and then having a good ending, not a gripping one. I have seen the reviews on Amazon and it would appear I am in a very small demographic as I would give this a two or a three out of five and hundreds of people have given it full marks/stars. I guess it was just not meant to be, I just didn’t ‘get it’ and it didn’t float my boat like the lying blurb told me it would. I may fall out with Richard and Judy over this one.