Angel

The DCI Ryan Mysteries, Book 4

By: LJ Ross

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

He'll make you his angel, but first you have to die....

After a turbulent time, DCI Ryan's life is finally beginning to return to normal, and he's looking forward to spending an uneventful Easter bank holiday weekend with his fiancée. Then, on Good Friday morning, he is called out to a crime scene at one of the largest cemeteries in Newcastle. The body of a redheaded woman has been found buried in a shallow grave, and the killer has given her wings, like an angel. Soon another woman is found at a different cemetery, followed quickly by another. Panic spreads like wildfire as a new serial killer is born, and Ryan's band of detectives must work around the clock to unmask him before he can strike again. Murder and mystery are peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunit set amidst the spectacular Northumbrian landscape.

©2016 LJ Ross (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Very good

These books are definitely improving

This was a definite "can't put down" book. I'm glad The Circle is gone but now we have another religious oriented mystery. Ryan and all his team are pulled in a few directions as women are found murdered. Is there a connection? Are Denise and/or Anna targeted? A great story with one of the best narrators I've heard lately.

not my favorite

this installment is rather boring and predictable. i got distracted easily and had to keep rewinding. last 10 minutes is prob the most suspenseful.

Love love love this series.

I am thoroughly enjoying this series and the characters involved. I enjoy the banter and their relationships with each. The stories are very easy to follow and my head was isn’t spinning..

Star lost because of the cliffhanger ending..

This is the forth book in the DCI Ryan Mysteries and I loved it as much as I did the other 3 books, except for one thing which I’ll explain later. Love the mystery, the murders, the investigation. This time there was different 2 murders to keep up with, so you had to figure out if they were connected somehow. Someone is killing redheaded women and one female DI investigator, Denise MacKenzie, has red hair, so you wonder if she’ll be next. THEN there’s the murder that MacKenzie and her partner Lowerson are working on, that of Mrs. Barbara Hewitt.

THEN at the end it was pretty much a cliffhanger. I mean, when you open your door and someone pops you in the face and everything goes black and the narrator thanks you for listening to yada, yada, yada, it’s over and you have no freaking idea what’s going to happen until the next book comes, whenever that is. Jeez, I really hate cliffhangers!!! Oh, Ryan got his killer but then it ended like that? One of the main characters gets knocked out by another killer and that's the end? WTF?

It’s nice to have a little romance in these stories, between Ryan and Anna, who are now planning their wedding. There is no sex but that’s alright, it’s still a great series. AND the F-bomb was used 6 times.

As to the narration: Wonderful! His voices for the men are just so awesome. You knew who was talking even if the book didn’t tell you. And Jonathan Keeble reads with incredible emotions. His women’s voices were even better in this book than the other 3 books.

Mixed feelings about this one

I like this series and the characters, but I do feel that each book is marginally less good than the previous one. I’m a bit annoyed by the way the author is trying to sell Ryan’s character. I get it: he’s handsome and smart, stop pointing it out. Let the character speak by his actions rather than the adoration of the supporting characters. If I have to read about his silver eyes one more time I may strain a muscle from rolling my eyes.
The story was interesting, but what really saved this one was the ending

Best of the Series so Far

Firstly, Johnathan Keeble is an exceptional narrator, right up there with Richard Armitage. His ability to add just the right amount of drama or personality to a scene makes is a very seamless and enjoyable listen. I liked this story because it was the least fantastical of the DCI Ryan series so far. I love the series to bits, but never really resonated with the elite Satanic cabal plot of the previous three. This book has just the right pace, good character development and a heck of an ending. I can’t wait to see what is in store.

Excellent Mystery - Great Characters

After their last case, DCI Ryan and his team are the stars of the show around Northumberland. The public is fickle though and when it becomes apparent there is a serial killer among them, they start demanding a quick solution. In this fast-paced, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down book, you’ll chase down the clues and put them together to find an unexpected and twisted villain at work.

In the early morning hours of a foggy, dreary, Good Friday in Newcastle upon Tyne, city gravedigger, Keith Wilson, drove his mini-digger machine into the West Road Cemetery. It might be a Bank Holiday, but death doesn’t wait for holidays. When he gets to the spot assigned for him to dig the grave, it appears to have already have a fresh burial. After checking with his dispatch and finding out he’s definitely at the correct spot, he looks at the grave and sees – OMGoodness, he sees a single dead eye, peering sightlessly at him through the soil.

DCI Ryan is at home with his fiancé Dr. Anna Taylor. The floor is strewn with wedding magazines. He loves her to distraction, but he just wants to get married, he doesn’t care what she chooses. So, when his mobile phone rings, and it flashes Control Room as the caller, he gleefully tells her – WORK!

The victim is a lovely red-haired lady in her early thirties who had been strangled. There is nothing to identify her, but she is posed to look like an Angel with arms overhead and blouse torn and spread to look like wings. Her burial site also included a note saying: Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. To Ryan’s surprise, DS Phillips recognizes that as being what a priest says when he is absolving the dead of their sins: ‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. What sins did the murderer think this lovely young woman had committed?

Ryan’s team also catches another case, and since the two cases aren’t related, he assigns it to DI Denise MacKenzie and DC Jack Lowerson. MacKenzie and Lowerson step into a gruesome scene. The badly decomposed body of a sixty-five-year-old woman, lying on the floor of her home. She’s not a well-liked woman, so nobody notices that she hasn’t been seen for a week. It looks like they have their work cut out for them just to get a timeline for when she was last seen.

Ryan and Phillips feel the urgency to solve the case as the bodies of other red-headed, early-thirties, women are found in graves awaiting burials for other people. Who is killing these ladies? What sins have they committed for which they need absolution? Why are they posed as angels?

It takes all of Ryan’s team to finally identify and apprehend this twisted murderer. I figured out who it was early on, but there are lots of red-herrings and twists-and-turns to throw you off and make you doubt your suppositions.

I listened to the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the narrator. I like his voice, but he does seem to have a narrower range of voices and it is often difficult to tell which character is speaking.

Why do I always think the narrator is saying Brian not Ryan 😄

Great story and very skilled narrator who manages multiple accents seamlessly. But it drives me crazy how often I think he is saying Brian not Ryan!!!

Riveting Tangle of Plots

This was my 4th book of the DCI Ryan series and I love how they intertwine various plots and lives throughout the emerging stories. The end of this book left me with a desire to go get the next one immediately so that I did not lose the impact & events continuing to unfold from this novel into the next..

4 should easily have been a 5

I could have and should have been able to rate this 5. I love the series. I love the characters. I love the narrator. I give authors literary license to have their very sharp protagonists do some things a cop would never do. It's a story, afterall. But this particular edition took it to a whole new level at one point. I almost literally slapped my forehead. A teenage stoner wouldn't have done what he did, much less a savvy cop. Why didn't the editor catch it? Something like that pulls the plug on your enthusiasm. So many options. I don't get it.

Very disappointing

What disappointed you about Angel?

Ridiculously daft and predictable.
Roman Catholic priest with no work to do in Holy Week - yeah thats going to happen.

Would you ever listen to anything by LJ Ross again?

Loved the first book. Second was good ish. This one, very missable.
No idea if I will listen to the next instalment.
I guess Im judging it against the Simon Serrailler books by Susan Hill but this isn't feeling like its in the same league.

What character would you cut from Angel?

The hacker

Another gripping DCI Ryan adventure

The second DCI Ryan book that I've really enjoyed. Ryan and his team are thrust into tracking down a killer who has been leaving his victims depicted as Angels.
Angel is a short, fast paced mystery, with enough intrigue and suspense to keep the listener wanting more.
Interesting twist at the end of the story, which has certainly left me wanting to follow up..

Catholic priest

brilliant book but why wasn't your Roman Catholic priest busy from Maundy Thursday till Easter Sunday with services etc? And, a local authority answering the phone on bank holidays?!
As for all those burials!

Perils of Pauline

Story good, narration excellent. Don't want a lead in for the next exciting episode. Don't want soap. Enjoyed the books so far but will give them a rest to see if they recover into independent novels

another good story from Northumberland

This is the fourth book in this series I have listened to and I have enjoyed them all. I like Jonathan Keeble as a narrator. Can't wait for the next one owing to cliffhanger at the end amongst other things

Disappointing 4th book

Having enjoyed the first three Ryan books I was looking forward to the 4th but was disappointed. I found it lacked substance and credibility.. The ending was poor- just a lead in to book5? I really like the narration despite the poor northern Irish accent.

Not good at all...

Too many unnecessary details of parishes and name places. Not a patch on the earlier books. I won't read any more in the series.

Drags

Any additional comments?

This is okay, but I have found myself wanting it to be finished, and that is never a good sign. I am now a couple of hours from the end and have decided to return it. I wonder if I would have stuck with it this far if it wasn't set in a location up the road from me. The narration was very good, with the exception of the Geordie accents. They are too strong in the relevant Detective Police officers. They may, at a pinch, speak that broadly at home, but they would curb it when speaking at work to people who are not local. It's all very 'from a Northumberland fishing village'!

Another great listen!!

Another great story line with all the usual characters from LJRoss coming to life. Narration by Jonathan Keeble impeccable.

Angel

Good story, spoilt by the fact that the narrator couldn't manage to pronounce the place names.