To break out of Heaven, a small group of rebel angels need a human patsy, someone not too bright, someone who won't ask questions, someone who will go with the flow, and they know the perfect fallen angel to find this human. Bayliss has been stuck on Earth, among the "monkeys," for centuries. He's modeled his life on the literary PI Philip Marlowe, and just like the best hard-boiled PI cases, the job turns out to be much more complicated. All he had to do was find a hapless human to take Gabriel's place, you know a human who will just go with the flow? Like all good classic detective stories, an encounter with a mysterious dame changes the best laid plans, and now Bayliss finds himself saddled with a new angel who won't play by the rules and won't take her new fate lying down. This dame may just prove to be Bayliss's undoing...or Heaven's.
SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT by Ian Tregillis is without a doubt the best book I've read this year. From the very first line, I was hooked. The imagery is stunning, but Tregillis captured the atmosphere and tone of the best classic PI of all time; Philip Marlowe. How Tregillis manages to combine the tropes of the hard-boiled detective genre and still turn them on their heads is brilliant. I'll just say that even knowing this genre well, I was surprisedβand thrilledβwith the ending.
For those of you who might have doubts about reading a novel written with a 1930-40's flair, Tregillis alternates points of view between Bayliss and the new angel, Molly. Molly is plucky, smart, and not the type to just let things be. She doesn't allow herself to fall into the mysterious dame category. It's this shift away from the classic female role in the PI genre that really makes SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT a tantalizing mystery with epic consequences.
SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT by Ian Tregillis creates a stunning world of fallen angels, a MacGuffin that could alter the universe, and a climax that is so perfect and so unexpected you will want to immediately read the book again just to find out how you missed the clues. I highly recommend SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT if you're a love mysteries, classic noir detective stories, and epic struggles for Heaven, or if you just love reading. Ian Tregillis creates a complex plot that twist and turn into surprising places and captures the gritty atmosphere of the classic detective mystery with stunning imagery and gripping emotion. His novels will not disappoint.
Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell
Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in
Thomas Aquinas's vision of Heaven. It's a noir detective
story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub
stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale,
and the Voice of God.
Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho
Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a
truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from
the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a
con job one billion years in the making.
Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has
decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy
to make their plan work.
Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss,
a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip
Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a
Marlowe novel-the mysterious dame who needs his help,
getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting
slipped a mickey.
Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand
maguffin, Something More Than Night is a murder mystery for
the cosmos.
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