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Falling Angel (Hardcover)

by William Hjortsberg (Author) "It was Friday the thirteenth and yesterday's snowstorm lingered in the streets like a leftover curse ..." (more)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Hutchinson (Feb 12 1979)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0091346908
ISBN-13: 978-0091346904

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1978, Hjortsberg's debut mystery was the basis for the film Angel Heart.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

A weird alliance: the jaunty tone and connect-the-dots format of the hardboiled detective story (which Hjortsberg does to unfussy perfection) - wedded to the cliches of the occult, complete with black masses, the transmutation of souls, and a Twilight-Zone denouement. It's 1959, and narrator Harry Angel - lumpy and aging Manhattan private eye - is hired to find out what happened to 1940s big-band-crooner Johnny Favorite after he went catatonic during WW II action; is Johnny still in a hospital. . . or dead. . . or what? After finding no trace of Johnny in the asylum where he's supposed to be (a doctor there dies right after being quizzed by Harry), Harry starts tracking down Johnny's old cohorts: a society-deb-turned-astrologist, a seductive Harlem pharmacologist heavy into voodoo ceremonies in Central Park (Coca-Cola dripping over dead chickens), a legendary black piano man, a Chrysler Building tycoon, and some off-season Coney Island grotesques. Many of these folks soon wind up dead and mutilated, the victims of a motley Satanic group which Harry eventually comes face to face with in a subway-station black-mass orgy. The technicalities of the occult are as blurry here as they usually are in soul-exchange sagas, but with unflappable, earthy Harry as a narrator, Hjortsberg keeps the supernatural stuff from highflown silliness. "Sounds like the floorshow at the Copa," says Harry when the Satanists describe Johnny Favorite's transmutation rite - and Harry's skepticism, right up to the last page, somehow intensifies the obliquely scary atmosphere. Hjortsberg is too good a writer to be messing around with the Prince of Darkness, but he has undeniably come up with an oddly disarming way of filtering B-movie subject matter through A+ prose - richly active with humor, precise milieu, and a smoky moodiness that lingers on. (Kirkus Reviews)

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It was Friday the thirteenth and yesterday's snowstorm lingered in the streets like a leftover curse. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

28 Reviews

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars not for publication, Jan 29 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Falling Angel (Mass Market Paperback)

Please please remove Jack Felson's review of Falling Angel from your site. It gives away the ending! (And it has no merit as a review.)

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5.0 out of 5 stars No wings for this angel... - a vertiginous book, Oct 15 2003

By	Jack Felson (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling Angel (Mass Market Paperback)

After some short science-fiction texts (like "Gray Matters"), William Hjortsberg kept some after effects from them because he put some elements in his first detective attempt. Here, a detective sweetly named Harry Angel is hired by a weird, disturbing character named Louis Cyphre to refind Johnny Favorite, a crooner who vanished before he could respect a contract. His investigation will soon take him down to the depths of black magic and vaudou, and... But I won't give you the whole plot. Just read this and you'll see. You'll be stunned. It's amazing. All I can tell you is that Angel isn't really an angel, and that his soul won't go up to heaven.

The cinema world couldn't not matter about this vertiginous story: it's finally British filmmaker Alan Parker who took it on the screen, with Robert de Niro and Mickey Rourke, and directed his only detective movie so far (along with his next release, "Mississippi Burning"). Despite its gloomy and (too?) bloody atmosphere, the film is far from worthing this incredible, abnormal novel, which doesn't respect any of the conventions because it's the only one, I think, where... but I won't give you the ending. Just read it and you'll see. It's astounding. Stephen King was himself terrified, and that means everything. A very special novel, one of the best detective stories ever written, a jewel not to be missed!

Paradoxically William Hjortsberg is less known as a screenwriter: "Legend", a fairy-tale filmed by Ridley Scott (1985), starring Tim Curry as... the Devil (here called Darkness) and Tom Cruise.

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4.0 out of 5 stars I saw the movie first but I still loved the novel, Sep 20 2003

By	Alexanderplatz (Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling Angel (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a hard book to review without giving too much away. Like many people I saw the film "Angel Heart" first and then read the book, so I knew the ending. But nonetheless I loved this book and in fact I could hardly put it down. I'd get home from work and the first thing on my mind was getting back to "Falling Angel."

If it were not for its macabre and graphic content this book might make excellent classroom reading for high school students, as it makes use of many bread-and-butter literary elements such as foreshadowing and dramatic irony, and it has some echoes of Greek tragedy and certain Elizabethan plays. At the same time it is a fast, easy read. The chapters are short, and each one advances the plot or our understanding of the characters with an efficiency that would make any creative writing teacher proud. Whether you call it horror, detective fiction, or a psychological thriller, this is a great read.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one gritty detective story!
While you read this, take what you know about the late fifties in New York City, and compare it here. This story immerses the reader superbly into the atmosphere of the setting. Read more

Published on Feb 17 2003 by R. E. Mattey

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing thriller
Detective stories are a mine field. Given the amazing numbers of this kind of books, every now and then you surely are going to step in a bomb and regret the time and money you... Read more

Published on Nov 14 2002 by J R Zullo

5.0 out of 5 stars AN EXCELLENT THRILLER THAT WORKS ON MANY LEVELS
At one point in William Hjortsberg's masterful horror novel, Epiphany Proudfoot, 17-year-old voodoo priestess, tells our detective hero Harry Angel "you sure know a lot about... Read more

Published on Nov 11 2002 by s.ferber

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, credible PI noir fiction
This novel is always found in the Horror section but it is really a private eye mystery. It's as good a PI novel as I have ever read and I highly recomend it. Read more

Published on Oct 10 2002 by Marc Clapp