The divine retribution of Alex North's The Angel Maker

Alex North’s The Angel Maker

Reviewed by Michelle Souliere

 

I’ve been hearing about Alex North’s books from some of my customers over the last few years, so when it was announced he had a new title coming out, I asked the nice folks at Celadon Books for an advance reader of it, figuring it would be a good opportunity to jump in.  The Angel Maker is the third book North has written under his name (prior work was done under a pseudonym).  Its predecessors were The Whisper Man and The Shadows.  The hardcover releases Feb 28, 2023.

 

Alex North writes books that appeal to fans of horror, and fans of suspense thrillers.  I walked into The Angel Maker without knowing much more than that, although I must admit in retrospect that I am always hoping for that little extra frisson of supernatural mystery in the mix to really make it grab me.  And while it is not overt, there are certainly undertones of that feeling interlaced throughout this new story, to great and eerie effect.

 

Katie and Sam have been together since high school, when their bond was sealed by a terrible event that almost took her younger brother Chris from her.  Katie’s brother grew more and more troubled after his tragic near-miss, and is now estranged from her, to her everlasting guilt. 

 

Years after that life-altering day, she and Sam now have a young child of their own, and a seemingly average, normal life.  But a shadow begins to rear its ugly head, looking through the windows at her reasonably placid life, and cracks appear in the walls Katie has built over the decades.  Darkness appears ready to creep back in and tear everything down in final, blind vengeance for reasons she can’t even fathom.

 

Is it paranoia?  Her husband Sam thinks so.  Guilt?  Katie herself wonders about that.  Is it really something that ties back to the attack on Chris?  Or is it something even older…?

 

Chris goes missing from his newly-stable recovered life, as does his boyfriend.  An esteemed college professor dies a gruesome death.  A valuable notebook goes missing – one belonging to a historic serial killer who was legendarily able to see the future.  The skin-crawling minutiae of the past few weeks comes down on Katie like a tsunami as she tries desperately to find her brother, alone.  She can’t tell Sam because he thinks she’s imagining everything, and he insists that her brother is best kept cut off from their family.

 

Detective Laurence Page is trying to draw all these strings together meanwhile, and may be Katie and Chris’s only hope, as the tide of history reaches its bloody, burning hooks towards them and everything they hold dear – everything they have worked so hard to keep safe.

 

The culmination of this story-within-a-story reveals secrets kept generations deep in a forgotten corner of local history, and both the heights and depths of human nature -- compassion and depravity fighting to the death.

 

Closing Notes:

The Angel Maker is a stand-alone novel, as are North’s other two books.  If you are a John Connolly fan, as I am, you will definitely find something to latch onto in this book, and you will be well entertained.  Fans of Michael Connelly’s Jack MacEvoy books will also enjoy this title.