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Summary: not for publication
Review: 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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Summary: Great combination of mystery and horror
Review: Set in late 1950's New York City, FALLING ANGEL is the story about a private detective named Harry Angel who is recruited by mysterious client Louis Cyphre to find a long lost big-band crooner named Johnny Favorite. Angel's search for Favorite leads him through a bloody trail that involves jazz musicians, sideshow performers, and Satanic voodoo cults. To further complicate matters, the closer Angel thinks he gets toward finding Favorite, the more dead bodies turn up that appear to have Angel written all over them. And closer to a truth that Angel won't want to know.I'm not going to spoil the plot for you, even if some reviewers already did. What I can tell you is that this is a splendid atmospheric novel. Hjortsberg does such a good job bringing about the feel of 1950's New York City that you can almost hear jazz playing somewhere in the background. The plot is intricate without being confusing as well. If you haven't read this masterpiece yet, I suggest you do so PDQ. But before you read it don't let anyone tell you how it ends. If they persist, RUN!!! Discover this fine book for yourself.
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Summary: Falling Angel (Dead Letter Mystery)
Review: so many books on the shelf woo you with smoke and mirrors. they offer a snappy quote with the promise of undeniable enthrallment. so you buy the book, read a few pages and realize you've been had. money and time wasted. well, kiddies, this is one book that guarantees like a stripper winking and motioning behind the curtain. from the onset, hjortsberg has you. he carved a story out of the occult practices and wove them together. if he where a women i'd marry'em. no other book i've read influenced me like this one. it is the proverbial hitchcock meets the exorcist scenerio. mister hjortsberg, you are a god--the best book i've ever read and the only one i've given friends to read.
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Summary: read 20 pages and put it down
Review: stephen king read it
i couldnt
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Summary: Impossible to Put Down!
Review: This is a fine little mystery with a heart that pumps the black blood horror. Let me quote Stephen King's review of the book:
"Terrific...As If Raymond Chandler Had Written The Exorcist...I've Never Read Anything Like It."
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Summary: I saw the movie first but I still loved the novel
Review: 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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Summary: my favorite book, my favorite movie
Review: This is my favorite book, and the movie angel heart is one of my favorite movies :)
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Summary: Great, credible PI noir fiction
Review: 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. One note, if you havent seen the movie (great movie by the way) read this first. I wish I hadnt bought the DVD and had read the book first. But then again the movie is what brought me to the book. So what came first the chicken or the egg? "I got a thing about chickens" Harry Angel
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Summary: This is one gritty detective story!
Review: 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. I swore I could almost smell cigarettes and hear the perfect, New York accents. The dialog was written well enough to do just that, make you think it is authentic New York. The storyline is fantastic. Basically, a detective is hired to find a person who has been missing for over fifteen years. Along the way, he must go through a bog of voodoo mysticism and black mass rituals until at the very end, the truth is revealed. The ending is extremely clever and there is no way I am going to spoil that. If you are into the crime - or horror - genre then there is absolutely no way you can miss this one.
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