Book Review: The Angel Maker by Alex North
By John Valeri
March 15, 2023
Alex North is as much a mystery as the books he writes. A British crime novelist and family man, he has achieved international acclaim and bestseller status under a nom de plume. His previous North novels, The Whisper Man (2019)—soon to be a feature film—and The Shadows (2020), are a potent blend of searing suspense and subtle supernatural. This February, after a three-year hiatus, he returns with a third standalone offering: The Angel Maker.
Prologue: Katie Shaw—a seventeen-year-old high school student on the cusp of grown-upness and graduation—makes the fateful decision to accompany her musically inclined boyfriend, Sam, home one afternoon to consummate their relationship. Sure, it means leaving her fragile younger brother Chris to fend for himself, but the future is a fickle, uncertain thing (or is it?) and she needs to express her love to Sam—especially when her parents won’t allow them to be alone together under their roof. The headiness of the occasion doesn’t last long, however. As she approaches home on foot, she is met by a police cordon and a kindly officer who shares some distressing news. While she and Sam were together, her brother was attacked by a deranged stranger with a knife whose red car can still be seen haphazardly blocking the road.
Flash forward: Katie and Sam are (not entirely happily) married with a preschooler, Siena; both the girl and her daycare have reported seeing a red car. It’s yet another premonition that something’s amiss. Katie and Chris have been estranged since his world spiraled into drugs, homelessness, and even a theft that she reluctantly reported to police. But their mom insists that he’s been several months sober and stable—which makes the fact that he’s disappeared again concerning. Despite her reservations about getting involved, Katie agrees to check things out. Also on the lookout is Detective Laurence Page—the man beyond the police cordon all those years ago. Now, he’s investigating the savage murder of a retired philosophy professor, Alan Hobbes, who’d been living in a partially burned house—and Chris’s face turns up on surveillance footage from the night he died. What does it all mean?
The author puts readers in a handful of POVs: Katie and Chris, Det. Page, (who has an endearingly crusty partner), and brothers Alan and Edward Hobbes (their story dates back to 1956, allowing for occasional flashbacks); this multitude of perspectives is necessary given the scope of the story but slows down the immersion process. There’s also the inclusion of a dead serial killer named Jack Lock, whose writings appear to have spurred on some sinister activities of late; indeed, a handwritten book of his—and one that allegedly predicts the future—has gone missing in the wake of Alan’s murder. Once a philosophy student himself, North uses the idea of determinism—simplistically put, that free will doesn’t exist and all life events are preordained—as an underpinning for the novel, which explores themes of rivalry, retribution, and redemption, often as they pertain to siblings.
Intriguing, if not as immediately absorbing as its predecessors, The Angel Maker is a solid, largely satisfying effort from Alex North. This one is a slow burn that really gets smoking as storylines converge and character interactions expand, culminating in a flaming hot, and arguably even fated, finale. At book’s close, the author acknowledges that this one was especially hard to write; it seems a portent reminder that some things are worth pushing through for the payoff that comes with persistence—both as writers and readers.
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