Angels in the Gloom is an intense saga of love, hate, obsession, and
murder that features an honorable English family--brothers Joseph and
Matthew Reavley, and their sisters, Judith and Hannah. In March 1916,
Joseph, a chaplain at the front, and Judith, an ambulance driver, are
fighting not only the Germans but the bitter cold and the appalling
casualties of the Battle of Somme. Scarcely less at risk, Matthew, an
officer in England's Secret Intelligence Service, fights the war
covertly from London. Only Hannah, living with her young children in the
old family home in tranquil Cambridgeshire, seems safe.
Appearances, however, are deceiving. By the time Joseph returns home,
rumors of spies and traitors are rampant in Cambridgeshire. And when the
body of a savagely murdered weapons scientist is discovered in a village
byway, the fear that haunts the battlefields settles over the
town--along with the shadow of the obsessed ideologue who murdered the
four siblings' parents on the eve of the war. Once again, this icy,
anonymous powerbroker, the Peacemaker, is plotting to kill.
Perry's kaleidoscopic new novel illuminates an entire world, from the
hell of the trenches to a London nightclub where a beautiful Irish spy
plies her trade; from the sequestered laboratory where a weapon that can
end the war is being perfected to the matchless glory of the English
countryside in spring. Angels in the Gloom is a masterpiece, steeped
in history and radiant with truth. It warms the heart even as it chills
the blood.
