Bootlegged Angel (Angel Series # 9)

When inept private eye Veronica Blugden offers streetwise Fitzroy Maclean Angel a job, he is instantly suspicious. Until, that is, he learns that it involves working undercover for a brewery in darkest Kent, where bootlegging cheap beer from France is a growth industry. With his usual skill for being in the wrong place at the right time, Angel manages to infiltrate one gang of imaginative but amateur smugglers and comes up against another that is anything but amateur – especially when it comes to violence. And to top it all, he finds himself put in charge of a run-down country pub, where boosting the turnover should be dead easy – as long as he can press-gang a trio of fashion models into acting as barmaids …

This edition, published to celebrate the Angel series’ 25th Anniversary in August 2013, also includes the bonus Angel short story ‘Calling Cards’, unseen in print since its sole previous publication in 1992.

‘Mike Ripley’s Angel series is back and taking no prisoners, with one of the best hangover scenes in crime fiction.’ – Ian Rankin

‘Like fine malt whisky, Angel is high proof and totally addictive.’ – Time Out

‘The outrageous, rip-roarious Mr Ripley is an abiding delight …’ – Colin Dexter

Another of Telos Publishing’s reissues of celebrated British author Mike Ripley’s series of comic crime novels featuring Fitzroy Maclean Angel.

262pp. A5-format paperback novel.
ISBN 978-1-84583-087-8
Published 31 July 2013 (Out of Print)

291pp. B-format paperback novel.
ISBN 978-1-84583-087-8
Published 22 January 2021

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Ripley is the author of 19 novels, including the award-winning Angel series of comedy thrillers, a dozen short stories and the non-fiction memoir Surviving A Stroke. He was a scriptwriter on the BBC series Lovejoy and the crime fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph and the Birmingham Post, reviewing more than 950 novels over 18 years. In the 1990s he was the co-editor, with Maxim Jakubowski, of the three Fresh Blood anthologies, showcasing new crime-writing talent such as Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Ken Bruen and Denise Mina. He has appeared at many literary festivals and conventions, developed a creative crime writing course for Cambridge University and devised and produced ‘An Audience With …’ stage shows for Colin Dexter and Minette Walters.

After a 25-year career in journalism and public relations, latterly for The Brewers’ Society, he became an archaeologist specialising in Romano-British sites in East Anglia until he suffered a stroke at the age of 50. He sat on the government’s Stroke Strategy Committee and currently supports both the Stroke Association and the Blood Pressure Association.

He writes the monthly column Getting Away With Murder for Shots Magazine, is part of the obituary writing team at the Guardian, and is the series editor for the imprints Top Notch Thrillers and Ostara Crime. Working with the Margery Allingham Society, he completed the novel left unfinished on the death of Youngman Carter in 1969, which was published in 2014 as Mr Campion’s Farewell. A second ‘continuation’ to feature Allingham’s famous detective, Mr Campion’s Fox, is published in 2015.