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Angels of Anguish |
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 Angels of Anguish bySherri L. Board Tug Press 302 pages, 1999 ISBN 0963476750 Reviewed by Diane Gotfryd Many years ago, I came upon a really strong book by an unknown author. Like Angels of Anguish, that novel was set on the California coast. Similarly, the main character was an independent and tough young woman. Her world was tight and well described. I felt as if I knew what she was thinking, doing, feeling, and seeing. Sue Grafton is famous now of course, and A IS FOR ALIBI was just the beginning of a long string of great books featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone, who still has surprises to offer us even as we pass the middle of the alphabet. Angels of Anguish shows the same potential with Board’s complex character Katlin LaMar, an extremely modern probation officer who lives on one side of the railroad tracks and works on the other. We meet her in a terrible moment, staring at the body of her beloved young godson, who may have been killed by a gang member. But is it that easy? He drowned, so there is no bullet to trace. Katlin traces his life instead. As we travel deeper into the gang culture we become just as inured, frustrated and angry as she has. A clever red herring will have some readers believing they know who did it for most of the book. The rest will believe something else. At the end, our eyes have been opened wide. We are cynical. We shrug our shoulders at the stupid reasons people die, just as if we worked Katlin’s job and finished a probationary period. It is an eerie feeling. Other aspects of the story are quite good. Perhaps one minor story line involving sponsorship of a sailboat club could be less obvious; perhaps the love interest could have been left hanging a little longer; and maybe the plot could have been a little smoother. But these are minor points. The characters are all well written and jump off the page. The settings are vivid, the dialogue natural. I want to make a special point of mentioning the brief lyrical moments the author allows to creep in, as a respite to many tense scenes with violent speech. In one such pause, while at a funeral attended by several gang members, Katlin muses: All wear black bandannas, their moco rags, around their foreheads. They huddle together in the pews, cold and silent, like black sheep whose wool has just been cut away from their skin. They have to cling to each other like that, or they will freeze to death. The author’s preface explains all you need to know about Katlin’s work setup, an interesting primer in itself. Times have changed in the lives of probation officers, and Board informs readers that they now spend a lot of time out of the office, armed and keeping tabs on gang members. California took the initiative in pairing its probation officers with police officers and forming special gang units. The author has researched these units thoroughly and it shows in her writing. It is certainly unfortunate that this driving look into modern crime did not benefit from a more discerning editorial eye, and I might have abandoned a lesser book for its repeated errors. I hope Board gets the writing nominations she deserves and a first rate publisher for the next book in this series. If you are going to try just one lesser-known author this year, Angels of Anguish is the book to buy. |
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