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Title: Avenging Angel by Anthony Appiah ISBN: 0-09-470010-9 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Format: Hardcover

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Authentic Cambridge Atmosphere
Comment: I'm the kind of mystery reader who prefers Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers: I prefer linear development, a sturdy sense of plot, character, and color, to the florid wordy thickets that some mystery afficiandos seem to go for.For my money, "Avenging Angel" delivers: the plot speeds ahead efficiently, and the characters are memorable and often plain funny. But it's the atmosphere--the half-satiric donnish details--that really stands out. I'd read a few books about the Cambridge Apostles, including John Banville's excellent novel "The Untouchable"; this isn't in the same league as the Banville, in my opinion, but it's far more enlightening and entertaining than the other fiction and nonfiction treatments of the famous--notorious?--Cambridge society I've seen. The book isn't readily available, though: I got mine at a second-hand book barn. I hear, by the way, that a new bio of Anthony Blunt is coming out next year; I wonder if anyone else knows about that?

Rating: 1
Summary: not impressive
Comment: I really wanted to enjoy this book. The moody English setting seems ripe for suspense, the characters all have something to hide, and the standards of this genre are low enough that I thought this would be a sure-fire laundromat read. Alas. The characters are one-dimensional and affected, and it is apparent not too long into the book who did it, though you don't find out why until the end -- and the revelation comes in a clumsy equivalent of finding a letter of confession written by the culprit. Also, the author's apparent fondness for the class system of Britain gets boring, and fast.