Fitzroy Maclean Angel Books In Order

Publication Order of Fitzroy Maclean Angel Books

Fitzroy Maclean Angel is a series of comedy thrillers books an English author of mystery and thriller books Mike Ripley. The series features Fitzroy as the main character; he is a part-time trumpet blower in London and part-time taxi, driver. He also does other part-time jobs to make ends meet. Angel in Arms and Angel Touch has won the Crime Writers’ Association Last Laugh Award for being the funniest novels.

Mike Ripley is the author of more than 23 books and a dozen short stories and a non-fiction memoir. He’s also an archaeologist and a critic. Angel can be compared to the main character in Lovejoy, a television series of comedy-drama mystery based on John Grant’s Picaresque books under the pseudonym Jonathan Gash. Similarly to Angel Series, Lovejoy series revolves around the adventures of the titular Lovejoy, a rogue antique dealer in East Anglia.

Just Another Angel

Just another angel is the first book in Fitzroy Maclean Angel series by Mike Ripley. The book is set in London in the 80s during the reigns of Loadsamoney and Thatcherism- an intriguing but also a deadly place to be. We are introduced to Maclean Angel, a part-time trumpet player and part-time taxi man taking illegal fare through his de-registered black taxi and at times he makes his living by being in the right place at the right time. And as he often claims, it’s better to be lucky than good. In this book, Angel meets a charming and enigmatic lady, and that marks the beginning of his troubles. Hotly hunted by a thuggish henchman and a jailbird gangster, a cop bent on vengeance and a tenacious Inland Revenue Inspector, Angel finds his life becoming more complicated by the minute.

And just how a women’s peace camp, an emerald pendant and a chunk of French francs fit the picture, he can hardly picture?

The first book in the series is an exciting read. Mike Ripley’s writing is well-paced and drags you in well, and his descriptions of the cast are well bodied such that you’ll immediately want to identify with them right from the start. The main character, Angel, is a loopy trumpet-playing taxi driver. He’s one of the eccentric Brits with de-licensed FX45 taxi Armstrong. He is not a private investigator- that would be too planned and organized for such an easy-going gentleman as our Angel. But still he manages to find his way into that position and qualifies. He has eclectic tastes in alcohol, music and certain controlled substances and friends and his friends’ ct as deliciously wonky as he is. There is Fenella and Lisbeth, the beauty and the beast lesbian couple who live downstairs. There is Werewolf a Wildman extraordinaire and a substance abuser; the Drunken Duncan, an expert mechanic. One of Angel’s favorite pastimes seems to be mooching records of his friends to make tapes.

Angel Touch

It’s London in the late 1980s during the reign of Loadsamoney and Thatcherism. Again we meet Angel, the man who makes ends meet by taking illegal fares using his deregistered taxi cab and at times by being in the right place at the right time. In this second series book, Angel comes to the rescue of his good neighbour, the beautiful investment analyst Salome, and finds himself undertaking a covert investigation into a series trading scam amongst the mega-rich wheeler-dealers and coked-up whizzkids of the City. And things turn to be nastier when a deadly car accident turns out to be anything but an accident.

Angel Hunt

In the third book in Fitzroy Maclean Angel series, Angel’s university friend drops in on him-literary as he falls to his death through a skylight window. And that marks the beginning of Angel’s troubles as he gets convinced by the cops in order to help them with their investigations into a group of animal activists who might have something more sinister on their mind than simple foxhunt sabotage. Again, Angel is “lucky” by being in the right place at the right time as through his investigation he’s able to earn a livelihood though it means endangering the lives of those he loves the most.

As earlier said, Mike Ripley has woven more than twenty-three books. One of the most notable ones includes Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, an intriguing examination of the post-war British thrillers. It’s a riveting history of British thrillers ranging from The Eagle Has Landed to Casino Royale in which Mike reveals that even though Britain may have lost an empire, thrillers by her author’s contributed significantly to saving the world. Drawing upon talks he had with many of the different authors mentioned in the book, Ripley shows how British authors, working effortlessly in the background of World War II came to conquer and dominate the field of adventure thrillers. The two distinct types of spy stories- spy fiction created by Le Carre and Ted Allbeury and the spy fantasy manifested by Ian Fleming’s James Bond.

Comedy thriller is a genre that blends elements and themes from comedy and thrillers. It often includes a darker tone common to other genres. Just like normal thrillers, a comedy thriller involves either espionage or organised crime. Mike Replay does a fantastic job in creating his funny and witty main character, Angel. Each book in the series will draw you in, laugh along as you witness the funny different scenarios that Fitzroy Angel has to go through to get some of his amateurish sleuth cases solved. In the fourth and fifth book in the series, a call from his old acquaintance sends Angel on a wild goose chase with a heavy metal band in the hunt of a truck full of illicit goods. He is also forced to get two jobs and in the process finds himself drawn into the underworlds, from world of role-playing fantasies where monsters are real, and games aren’t fun anymore to that of London’s homeless. Sardonic, entertaining, and downright hilarious crime, Fitzroy Maclean Angel is a highly recommended read.