A Quiet Belief in Angels

Growing up in rural Georgia during the 1940s, Joseph Vaughan finds himself at the center of a series of mutilations and killings of young girls. Just a teenager, Joseph becomes determined to protect his community from the killer, but he is powerless in preventing more murders—and no one is ever caught. Ten years later one of his neighbors is found hanging from a rope, surrounded by belongings of the dead girls; the killings cease, and the nightmare appears to be over.

Desperate and plagued by everything he has witnessed, Joseph sets out to forge a new life in New York. But even there the past won’t leave him alone—for it seems that the murderer still lives and is killing again, and that the secret to his identity lies in Joseph’s own history.

Author Information R.J. Ellory is the author of five novels, soon to be published by Overlook in the U.S. A Quiet Belief in Angels was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the American Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction. Two of Ellory’s earlier works were shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award.