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

It’s ok

I like the characters, though I too am a bit weary of hearing about the seemingly endless wondrous charms of our heroic DCI. Personally I prefer his rather more down to earth DS.

Storyline wise I think there are only so many times you can recycle a plot in which someone you love or one of your team is in mortal peril before it becomes old and so far every book in this series has used that ploy. I’ve already downloaded the next book so I’ll hear it out, but that might be the last one for me.

On a positive note the narration is very good and the accents convincing.

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.

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!!!

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

The Best Yet!

The best DC Ryan book yet! Excellent characters, mystery and intrigue! Love that I can the audio for $1.99 through Kindle Unlimited!

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.

Always a good listen

This book was not necessarily my favorite but , as always, the narration by Jonathan Keeble is outstanding. The emotion he demonstrates makes the story. Plus, I particularly relish listening to his Sergeant Phillips, one of the best characters in the series. I’m on to Book 5.

Angel

loved the story, the narration, this book had me hooked from the beginning. Not the ending you expected, now want to get to the next book

excellent

And the saga continues....I just really hope though that McKinsey doesn't die and I seriously hope the phycopath Hacker gets his!!

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.