The Style of R. J. Ellory

Found another marvelous murder mystery write whose stories I am compulsively reading: R. J. Ellory. The first of his I finished is A Quiet Belief in Angels. Ellory alternates stream of consciousness chapters exploring the thoughts of a main character with ones advancing the chronology of the plot. This format is also used in his book, A Simple Act of Violence, which I expect to finish later today and append to this blog post.

In Quiet Belief we follow the life of Joseph Vaughan beginning grammar school in rural Georgia where young girls from his classes are being brutally killed. Joseph is an observant smart boy who is encouraged to write by his teacher; he is also a champion of the community as he organizes a group of his peers, the Guardians, to protect the girls from attack. The story is set against the threats and engagements of World War 11 and depicts the fears and biases of his town as they citizens and law suspect a local rich German as the murderer.


Despite his heroics and talents, Joseph leads the life of Job, coming under suspicions himself as the murders continue even after the German's suicide, he loses his wife and unborn child in a tragic accident, he moves to Brooklyn to pursue his hopes to be an author and while he has an acclaimed first novel, his new love is killed similar to those from Georgia, and once again his is the main suspect. He goes to trial and is convicted and sent to Auburn. There after a decade of imprisonment, he begins to write again, penning A Quiet Belief in Angels, a recapitulation of the events of his life leading up to his conviction. His case is appealed, he is released and returns to Georgia to find the killer. And no, I am not going to divulge the ending.

What I liked about this book so much are three things: first, like Stansberry's The Confession, the stream of consciousness reflections are humanly ambiguous enough that Joseph himself remains a possible suspect despite his early age when the serial murders began. However these ruminations are much more poetic than the self-aggrandizing bravado of Stansberry's forensic psychologist. Second, Ellory's depiction of life in prison is much more frightening than Hugo's Last Day of a Condemned Man. Hugo is writing for prison reform and his book is a polemic of the societal effects of isolation of criminals versus their rehabilitation. Ellory, a former convict himself, writes from personal experience. He does not dwell on inmate on inmate brutality; he writes about the grinding down of the spirit and the soul. Finally, like The Anniversary Man, the writing has a wonderful fast pace, the plot twists and the words are lyrical.