ANGEL CITY
by Mike Ripley
It's only a short step, thinks Fitzroy MacLean Angel, from driving the car for hire he calls Armstrong to signing on with plugged-in teenager Tigger O'Neil to pick up some plastic sacks for one Bert Bassotti and deliver them to a series of London scrap yards. The runs, though obviously illegal, are quick and lucrative, and if Tigger isn't great company—we're talking about as much mental activity as a giant redwood—there are no strings attached. Until Tigger vanishes, that is, and Angel finds that he's more committed to the kid than he thought. A tip from Tigger's equally scintillating mate Lee (the Smackhead) sends Angel, together with a quiet neighbor who reveals unsuspected depths, on a fantasy- playing stint in a dark cave, where Angel does indeed find the boy- -only to lose him to murderous thugs. It's only with Tigger's death and the sudden disappearance of Bassotti's firm that the real detection starts, as Angel, seeking to avenge the teen, drags his new Phantom of the Opera mask around West London asking where Bassotti's gone, why anybody would have killed inoffensive Tigger, and, oh yes, what was in those plastic sacks in the first place? Angel (Angels in Arms, 1992, etc.) leans a little too heavily on his raffish charm in this mechanically plotted, depthless refugee from the telly.