I first read Falling Angel in 1983. Right after the KEW list was published in the old Twilight Zone magazine. Naturally, I went to the public library in search of the books on the list. Wagner being the obscure literature fan, I didn’t find too much. The exception was Falling Angel, which I took home and read over a matter of days.In preparation for this review, I read the book again. I don’t usually re-read books as there’s too much out there I haven’t read. But I felt the passage of 30 years would dull my memory to the point of writing a bad review. I gritted my teeth and went back to the book.Astonishingly, I enjoyed the book more this time than on the first read. Hjortsberg, on his website, talks about why he sat the novel in 1959: these were the most vivid years he could remember oh his hometown of Manhattan, New York City. Manhattan in the 50′s comes alive in these pages. Coney Island, Harlem all these places were written through the eyes of someone was there. It makes for a very vivid background.Harry Angel, private investigator, is working the gumshoe trade in Manhattan, 1959. One day he’s contacted by a powerful lawyer on behalf of a mysterious client. The client, an eloquent gentleman named Louis Cyphre (pay attention to the name), wants Angel to find a missing crooner from the 1930′s: Johnny Fortune. It seems Mr. Cyphre sponsored Fortune’s musical career before WWII until the singer was wounded in the war. He’s been convalescing in a private sanitarium since the incident, barely conscious. Cyphre has discovered Fortune is missing from the place and wants him located.In true hardboiled PI fiction, Harry Angel strolls down the mean streets of Manhattan looking for the missing Fortune. He runs into many people who knew Fortune, but few who remember anything about him. This was before the Net and massive data information on every particular subject. Angel is forced to visit reporters, libraries and consult things known as phone books. It was a different time.The closer he gets to finding Fortune, the more the dead bodies start accumulating First, it’s a doctor at the sanitarium, then more and more. Each know a little bit about why Fortune disappeared, but they won’t talk. And each have an upside down star or inverted pentagram on their person. Soon, Angel begins seeing Mr. Cyphre in his dreams.The book is full of bizarre occult references to New York City. There’s a voodoo ceremony in Central Park. One of the witnesses he consults is a socialite astrologer. And there is the required black mass. I’m not sure what Hjortrsberg was trying to say about the forces of darkness, given the grim ending. My guess is a warning to stay away from things far more powerful and sinister than you can imagine.Of course I saw the 1987 movie adaptation, Angel Heart, when it hit the screen. Having read the book before and after the movie was released, I can say that it is a good adaptation. Mickey Rourke made a good Harry Angel, but the personality of Angle in the book is too Ross MacDonald to get a good visual. On the second read, I kept visualizing Lisa Bonet as Epiphany Proudfoot, Angel’s love interest. I should mention the entire book takes place in Manhattan, unlike the movie which has a side trip to New Orleans.The book isn’t difficult to find and has been reprinted many times. It’s easily the best merger of PI fiction and supernatural literature.
At one point in William Hjortsberg's masterful horror novel "Falling Angel," Epiphany Proudfoot, 17-year-old voodoo priestess, tells our detective hero Harry Angel "you sure know a lot about the city." The city in question is the New York of 1959, and if Angel knows a lot about this crazy burg, then Hjortsberg, in the course of this tale, demonstrates that he knows even more. While much has been said of this book's scary elements--its voodoo ceremonies and Black Mass meeting and horrible murders--what impressed me most about this tale is the incredible attention to realistic detail that the author invests it with. I don't know if the author grew up in this town in the '50s or just did a remarkable research job, but the reader really does get the impression that this book (which came out in 1978) was written a few decades earlier. Roosevelt Island is called Welfare Island, quite correctly; street names are given the names they had 45 years ago; subway ads are described that I can dimly recall from my youth at the time; one-cent peanut-vending machines are in the subways (boy, does that bring me back!); and on and on. This is the type of book in which if something is described, you can bet your bottom buck that it really existed. For example, at one point our hero walks into a 42nd St. theatre called Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus. I checked it out; it was really there in the late '50s! You can really learn a lot about the city as it was by reading this fast-moving tale; it's almost like a history lesson wrapped up in a hardboiled voodoo thriller.And what a thriller this is! Even without the incredible attention to detail, this book would be a winner. In it, Harry Angel is hired by Lou Cyphre (get it?) to track down '40s crooner Johnny Favorite, and by the time Angel is through with his quest, we have been treated to all sorts of oddball NYC characters and grisly doings. Many scenes impress, most notably the late-night Central Park voodoo ceremony, the Black Mass in the abandoned subway station, and an off-season walk through the Coney Island midway. The book is justifiably included in Jones' and Newman's excellent overview volume, "Horror: The Hundred Best Books." It works on many levels--as a thriller, as a scarifier, as a Faustian object lesson--and succeeds on all of them. I haven't seen the "Angel Heart" movie that was made from this wonderful book, but can't imagine it being any better. This book deserves all the praise that's been heaped on it. Fortunately, it's still in print, as it well should be. I highly recommend it.
What do You think about Falling Angel (2006)?
I'm a huge fan of noir crime fiction, and someone recommended this book as one I'd like in that genre. And sure enough, it held up as a fine noir novel. There's the private detective, Harold Angel, working out of a crappy little office, dressed sloppily, with stains on his tie; places that people wouldn't go to after dark; a private hospital in the country, characters involved in the dark world of voodoo and black magic etc. etc. And Angel's been hired by someone to find a missing singer who's been in said hospital but has disappeared. With only a few leads, he's off. But the closer I came towards the end, the more I realized that there's something just a wee bit off kilter here and then I got the surprise of my life. Talk about plot twist! So I won't spoil the book for others by going into any further detail here, but I will say that if you like a touch of the supernatural in your fiction, then you've got to add this to your reading stack. Very well done.
—Nancy Oakes
Vooooodoooo...hard boiled detective mystery, and twisted loooooooove.Thanks Jeff- just what I was in the mood for.FALLING ANGEL...the 2nd novel I have read this month that Mickey Rourke stared in the movie...but this time, the book was sooooooooooooooo much better than the film...and it has nothing to do with the fact that Mickey is cuter in Nine and a Half Weeks- I swear.New York City 1959Private investigator- Harry Angel is hired by mysterious client- Louis Cyphre to find Johnny Favorite- a crooner injured during WWII and possibly living in an old folks home....or is he?Harry fails to abide by a number one rule...never trust a man with long finger nails. Just don't do it!!! Men with long finger nails alllllllllways = bad news....but Harry takes the case anyways- and follows a trail leading to Johnny. Soon he is in waaaay over his head- dealing with things waaaay out of his comfort zone. This book was EXACTLY what I was looking for, at EXACTLY the right time- Willian Hjortsberg is definitely an author I am going to read again. I just hope his next book bloooooooows me away like this one did.
—Delee
If a mystery gets mixed with the occult or the supernatural, the result is often disastrous for the 'willing suspension of disbelief'. Falling Angel is an exception to the rule.Struggling private investigator Harry Angel is hired by a foreign client, Louis Cyphre, to find Johnny Favorite, a crooner from before the war. Favorite is supposed to stay at a private hospital in upstate New York, where he is treated for 'shell shock' sustained in the war, but when Cyphre tries to visit him he gets the runaround.Angel visits the private hospital, only to learn that Favorite was transferred to the VA hospital in Albany in 1945. The transfer is bogus, but the person responsible turns up dead, so Angel has to dig in Favorite's past in order to track him down.Favorite used to hang out with an eclectic crowd—fortune tellers, musicians, voodoo priestesses and occultists—and Angel's search takes him from the heights of the Upper West Side to the depths of Harlem.The missing person case turns sour when it looks like Favorite is desperately trying not to be found; desperate enough to kill anyone who might know where to find him.Angel follows, descending deeper and deeper into Favorite's sordid past, only to end up knee-deep in corpses and to find his own past connected to Favorite's in the most unusual fashion.Not only are all the characters in this mystery finely drawn, the dialogue is quirky and surprising and the Faustian ending brings the mystery to a satisfying conclusion.This novel was also filmed as Angel Heart, with Mickey Rourke as Harry Angel and Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre.
—Martyn Halm
