Fast-paced action, unexpected twists and a strong, tortured hero: It’s the perfect recipe for a great thriller. Reed Arvin mixes these ingredients to perfection and delivers a legal roller-coaster ride in Blood of Angels … Arvin weaves the strands together with fine skill. The story moves swiftly, and issues are explained succinctly. What if Bol isn’t the perpetrator? And even if the wrong man was executed for the convenience store crime, backing off this case won’t keep the peace. The right answer must be found, or The Nations will explode … Blood of Angels isn’t high literature, nor is it meant to be. It’s simply a good thriller, well-told, one that keeps the attention tuned and the pages turning until the end. And that’s all it needs to be.
Blood of Angels has its literary aspirations. But it fits too neatly into the Wish-I-Were-Grisham mold … Blood of Angels also involves a beautiful, crusading minister whose fight against the death penalty eventually leads her to Dennehy's hot tub. The same book incorporates the following: Dennehy's mentor, on the verge of retirement; Dennehy's beloved daughter, a prime target for mayhem; Dennehy's pet cat, ditto; and Dennehy's ex-wife, now married to a rich plastic surgeon who makes Dennehy feel inadequate.
It is clear that Arvin knows Nashville with an intimacy that is at once pleasurable and painful. It is a town of quiet, subtle intrigue, of promise and pain, where a kiss
on the cheek and a knife to the back both can be delivered with a smile and cordiality unmatched elsewhere. Arvin captures this spirit quite nicely. But his main protagonist is Thomas Dennehy, senior District Attorney for Davidson County. Dennehy's first person, present tense narration provides a knife's edge immediacy
for his tale … Blood of Angels has enough intrigue and suspense for three novels, yet it never feels crammed or unduly compressed. Arvin provides what is perhaps the fairest, most balanced discourse on capital punishment I've encountered, while at the same time he populates his story with characters who
the reader will honestly care about, and wonder about, when the tale is told.
Pretty quickly—maybe too quickly—Blood Of Angels inches away from the race angle and becomes a spirited debate over the death penalty. Dennehy gets romantically involved with a defense witness, activist preacher Fiona Towns, and their clash of convictions forms the spine of Arvin's book. The outcome of the two legal cases aren't too hard to guess, but Arvin's ultimate opinion of capital punishment remains in doubt throughout, as he sets up the different sides of the argument, leaning heavily on the opinions of the tough, crafty old bastards who bring in the bad guys. Too bad, then, that those characters are such characters, and that the trail of clues in both murders leads to the kind of brilliant villain who only pops up in bestsellers. Arvin captures the flavor of middle Tennessee and the complexity of the law, but he steps away from reality whenever he pitches to genre fans.
Dennehy is tough, in court and out, and has plenty of interesting personal problems—primarily an ex-wife for whom he has conflicting feelings and an 11-year-old daughter he adores. He's a highly sympathetic figure, as are Arvin's other characters—except the bad guy who's harboring a deadly grudge and a diabolical plan that confounds both Dennehy and the police … This is another winner that thriller, mystery and general fiction readers alike will relish.
The setup is familiar, but Arvin calculates everything—the mystery, the office politics, the anti-death-penalty demonstrations, the race riots, the fiendishly escalating threats—so neatly that the whole package is an offer you can’t refuse: the first summer-movie blockbuster of the year.
