Nightmare, with Angel

After rescuing Marianne Cadogan from an incoming tide on a lonely and forgotten part of Britain's coast, ex-con Ryan O'Donnell is cornered into helping her escape a supposedly abusive father to reach the safety of her mother. Too late, he finds himself compromised, the subject of a trans-European manhunt while he struggles to deliver the child and prove his motives pure/ The deeper in he gets, the more trapped he will become.

Amazon.com Review

Stephen Gallagher is a bestselling British author whose dark psychological fiction is so well crafted, it transcends the "suspense" genre in which it's usually placed. Nightmare, with Angel is about an 11-year-old girl who runs away from her lonely life in England with an emotionally distant father, and sweet-talks a mentally ill tinker into helping her search for her mother in Germany. During the chase that ensues, as the girl and her reluctant friend flee from the police, we learn why both the tinker and the girl's mother are likely to be very dangerous to her. This is a novel to lose yourself in: it not only has an absorbing story, but also richly imagined characters such as the panicky father, endearing police personnel, and an anxiety-provoking, yet oddly touching relationship between the mismatched friends. And the mood is creepy--not in the least bit sentimental.

From Publishers Weekly

Plucked from her German mother and forced to live with a chilly English father who's often away from their ramshackle house on a lonely stretch of coast, 11-year-old Marianne Cadogan sticks like an unwanted burr to Ryan O'Donnell, the rough-living loner who rescued her and her dog from the sea. After running away, she entraps Ryan into trekking with her to Germany to find her mother, a tortured woman sinking low among the worst kind of flesh peddlers. But buzzing in Ryan's mind--and alarming police who mount an international search for the twosome--is his memory of murdering a girl much like Marianne. The question is whether her dogged innocence will mean a chance for redemption for Ryan--or ruination. Slow set-ups undercut the climactic scenes in this psychological thriller by a bestselling British writer making his American hardcover debut. Spiced with sexual violence, dark secrets and one-note villains, the book limps along as tension repeatedly tightens then perceptibly loosens its grip. The publisher is marketing this book with a "special introductory price," which may attract readers. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

British TV writer Gallagher makes his US debut in this neo-gothic tale of an unhappy girl who's neglected by her often absent father, who's bent on returning to her highly unsuitable mother--and who runs away from home in the company of a child killer. It's not surprising that 11-year-old Marianne Cadogan, left for days with an unsympathetic housekeeper while her distant father Patrick is away on business, would turn for companionship to Ryan O'Donnell, the scavenger who rescued her and her dog from a sudden squall outside her isolated house. Despite Ryan's repeated truculent warnings, she keeps returning to him--and, when she's finally worn out with grief and loneliness, begs him to go with her to Germany in search of Patrick's estranged wife Annaliese. She doesn't know (and for a long time neither do we) that Ryan's done serious prison time for murdering another young girl years ago, or that Patrick left Annaliese abruptly five years before because he found out she was into wholesale sexual humiliation with a white slaver. So we've got Marianne threatened by a companion who has a long history of homicidal mental disturbance, headed toward a mother whose friends would love to get their hands on her, and pursued by a father determined to kill her protector (if that's what he is). Something's got to give, and it's Annaliese, whose violent death pushes Gallagher's tale over the edge into chop-chop action before the preordained uplifting fade-out. The title says it all. As in disaster movies, whatever may happen to the good guys, the bad guys are sure to be punished in this swift- moving, professional midbrow pulp. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap

nest British writer of bestselling popular fiction since le Carre." The IndependentEleven-year-old Marianne Cadogan lives a lonely life with her stern, often absent father in a big house by the sea. When, one day, a stranger rescues Marianne from the rising tide, she believes she's found a friend at last. Then Marianne and her rescuer, Ryan O'Donnell, vanish. While Patrick Cadogan convinces the police his daughter has been kidnapped, Marianne and Ryan race to Germany in search of her missing mother and a secret that Marianne must never, never be allowed to discover . . . From the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Stephen Gallagher is the author of fourteen novels including Valley of Lights, Down River, Rain, and Nightmare, With Angel. Recent TV work includes an award-winning Silent Witness and a stint on Stan Lee's Lucky Man; he's also written for Doctor Who, Murder Rooms, Rosemary & Thyme, and is the creator of Jerry Bruckheimer's science thriller series Eleventh Hour. A Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, he's also the creator of a series of historical mysteries featuring Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy.

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