Angel

There is a citywide epidemic of arson in San Francisco, and Detective Dave Peters and his partner, Danny, are on the case. Their routine investigation becomes more and more spontaneous and impossible. An astonishing scenario emerges: the War in Heaven, which takes place outside of time, is still being fought. Sometimes a minor demon drops out of that war and into time, on Earth, to hide - masquerading as a human. Sometimes an angel is sent to Earth to destroy these evil beings. But an angel on such an errand may care nothing for human life. Those who die go to Heaven, or elsewhere - not the angel's concern.Such an angel now stalks its prey in San Francisco - but it is newly fallen because it has begun to enjoy destruction. Dave and Danny, the only ones who believe in the angel, must track it down and, with the help of the Church, exorcise it.

From Publishers Weekly

Although touted by its publisher as a "metaphysical thriller," this 1993 novel from Britisher Kilworth, who in 1994 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for his collection Hogfoot Right and Bird Hands, turns out be a run-of-the-mill police procedural pumped up with stale speculations on good and evil. Imagine the surprise of San Francisco police detectives Dave Peters and Danny Spitz when they discover that the pyromaniac torching people and places with an awesomely lethal "white fire" is a rogue angel who hunts comparatively benign "demons," or angels who fell to Earth with Lucifer. While the two cops struggle to reconcile this reversal of good guy/bad guy roles with their own religious convictions, and to make sense of the divine's grievous toll on human life (including Dave's wife and child), the rampaging angel ponders his corruption by his earthly sojourn. These crises of faith provide a more varied texture than found in most serial-killer stories, but Kilworth subordinates their development to cataloguing the personality quirks of his characters and to throwing out red herrings galore. A subplot in which Dave's new girlfriend decides that she must die, in order to warn Heaven of the rogue angel's rampage, falls flat. Dave and Danny's final showdown with the angel is satisfyingly spectacular, but it also crystallizes the novel's problems by offering a paradigmatic example of how Kilworth, stymied for answers to theological questions, will fill the gap with a good shootout (May) FYI: Archangel, the sequel to Angel, was published in England in 1994 but has yet to reach our shores.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In San Francisco, a six-month rash of unexplained arsons confounds the police. Detectives Dave Peters and Danny Spitz--the D & D team--are assigned to the fire-chasing patrol. They become personally involved when Dave's wife and son die in a department-store fire, one of many triggered by an almond-scented, revenge-seeking angel, who has come to earth as a demon hunter, a search-and-destroy army of one determined to annihilate fallen angels. Destroying this prey is its only purpose; that these flash-fire blasts also kill innocent humans and destroy buildings is of no concern. Vanessa Vangellen, a theology teacher who punishes herself for childhood sexual abuse by extinguishing lit cigarettes on her forearms, provides needed insight on angels. Ghastly hallucinations and the torching of their precinct house fail to scare off the two detectives who must, above all else, stop the rogue angel's fiery rampage. The line between good and evil becomes blurred in this twisted tale of fire and angels. Jennifer Henderson

From Kirkus Reviews

This rare US appearance for Kilworth (A Theater of Timesmiths, 1985)--he has a lengthy science fiction/fantasy track record in his native England, where Angel was first published in 1993--is set in San Francisco and boasts a rather colorless pair of detectives in pursuit of a pyromaniac angel. As the tally of suspicious fires reaches an appalling and inexplicable high, detective Dave Peters (known as Mother Teresa) loses his wife and son in a department store conflagration. His partner, Danny Spitz (Friar Tuck), watches helplessly as yet another fire rips through an apartment building; the firebug appears to be a powerful, eerily handsome man who's somehow unaffected by the tremendous heat. After lots of banter and some unproductive sleuthing, David and Danny are forced to conclude that the fires are being started by an angel using holy fire--one whose self-imposed mission is to track down and incinerate demons who, fleeing Armageddon, have taken refuge on Earth; the angel cares nothing for the people who get burned up along with the demons. The sleuthing duo stands no chance against the angel until it knowingly disobeys a divine command and falls--so becoming one of the demons it was trying to eliminate. Now, its new mission will be to destroy Dave and Danny. . . . Impossible as it may seem to make San Francisco sound anonymous, Kilworth succeeds; still, the serviceable plot is packed with well-rendered incidents and intriguing, unsettling insights into the nature of angels and demons. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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