I love stories with a strong sense of place, whether it’s the meticulously researched archeological digs of Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody mysteries or the wonderfully illogical fantasy landscapes of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Fallen Angel fits neatly into this place-as-character tradition.
The series is set in Bete Noire, a murky burg that’s home to more than its share of unpleasantness. It’s a city that seems to exist outside of conventional morality. It attracts unsavory elements, whether criminal or supernatural, but it doesn’t necessarily accommodate them.
That’s because Bete Noire has also managed to attract Lee, the Fallen Angel of the title. She’s a disruptive presence in the city’s everyday business of organized crime, blood feuds, and malignant appetites. And it isn’t even that she’s a moral crusader, a Batman to Bete Noire’s Gotham. Her motives are much more ambiguous, and her methods can be downright frightening.
On paper, her methodology is simple. People in need of assistance come to her, and she helps them out of their difficulties. In practice, it’s much messier. Lee’s solutions are very rarely in line with her charges’ desires. While she seems egalitarian in whom she’ll help – runaways, hapless tourists, nuns, and bitter rivals – there’s a streak of sadism and self-interest to Lee that generates suspense. Will the people Lee helps wish she hadn’t? And what does Lee get out of it?
That isn’t to say the Fallen Angel isn’t sympathetic. While her past is still fairly obscure at this point, it’s evident there’s a lot of pain in it. And writer Peter David gives her a blunt, mordant sense of humor. Like the protagonist of a hard-boiled mystery, she’s got her own atonement to consider, even as she inserts herself into the lives of others.
In fact, David manages to give layers to his large cast of lowlifes. Whether its hapless drug lord Asia Minor or Lee’s steely, sly nemesis, Mariah, there’s an offbeat humanity to the residents of Bete Noire. They may be criminals, but there’s an unmistakable sense that they’re holding their own in a situation that’s spun out of their control.
Most of the prominent citizens of Bete Noire are on display in Fallen Angel 14. It’s a busy night at Furor’s, the neutral-zone bar Lee uses as a headquarters. Without being overly expository, David crafts neat little vignettes that serve as entertaining character introductions for new readers while enhancing dynamics and furthering subplots for current fans.
Peter David has crafted a unique fictional world with Fallen Angel, and he’s populated it with well-crafted characters. Interpersonal dynamics are balanced with suspense and a healthy dose of horror. It’s really one of the freshest, most rewarding titles out there, and you should give it a try. (And now you have a chance to try it for free! Just enter Johanna’s contest here.)