Book Review: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

The case of the Alperton Angels seized the public imagination when the cult came to a grisly end in a London suburb in late 2003. Eighteen years on, true crime writer Amanda Bailey has been asked to write a book based on the historical events, with a twist. If she can find and locate the baby at the heart of the cult’s homicidal intent, she could write a book from the now-grown child’s perspective, a book that’s sure to be a bestseller.

The task of locating the now-eighteen year-old is daunting. For understandable reasons, the identities of the child and the teen couple who were ostensibly its parents were never made public. Holly and Jonah were the names that the cult had given to the couple, and the only ones ever used by officials when referring to them. Holly had often implied that the baby’s actual father was Gabriel, the leader of the Alperton Angels and the only other member who survived the cult’s mass suicide. He was tried and convicted of murder, despite protesting his innocence and is serving a life sentence in Tynefield Prison. While he’s the only survivor of the cult who is easy to track down, he adamantly refuses each of Amanda’s requests for an interview.

At least the police who were involved in the discovery and arrest are more forthcoming. Police Sergeant Aileen Forsyth, who escorted Holly and the baby into care on that terrible night, is candid with Amanda about what she saw. Amanda records her interview, and sends it to her protege Ellie Cooper for transcription. Ellie provides her own commentary for free:

AF: It wasn’t my place to judge. [Holly] had obviously been through a trauma, but I knew social services were involved anyway. Didn’t have to escalate my concerns at that point. So, I acted normal. When we stopped at traffic lights, I looked over my shoulder, said what a sweet little thing it was, and “look at the peaceful expression on its face.” [A pause here, either she’s having trouble remembering or the memory is a difficult one. EC] I can see the look in her eyes now, all this time later. “It isn’t peaceful,” she said, “it’s evil. It’ll destroy the world and no one can stop it.”

The Alperton Angels had proclaimed that the baby was the Antichrist and needed to be ritually slaughtered on the night of a particular astrological alignment in order to stop its rise to power. Holly had had a change of heart on the night itself, smuggling the baby away from the rest of the cult and calling the police to come get her instead. Later, the bodies of the other Angels were found in the basement of the building where they’d planned to kill the baby, their bodies fallen in the classic pattern of mass suicide.

Fast forward nearly two decades later and, to Amanda’s chagrin, the baby is still as hard to pin down as it was back then. Complicating her work further is the involvement of her rival Oliver Menzies, who just so happens to be writing a book on the same subject. Amanda and Oliver have a history, so she isn’t above resorting to underhanded techniques to get the edge over him. When she tries contacting a journalist acquaintance about his initial coverage of the case, she’s quick to roll with the unexpected curveball she receives in response to her querying text:

Unknown number

 

This is the Medway NHS Trust. I’m so sorry to inform you Mr Graham passed away with his phone in his hand. Your message was the last thing he saw. He’d pressed reply, but sadly suffered a heart attack before he could type his response. Are you a relative and if not, do you know if he had any? We are trying to sort out his affairs and have drawn a blank.

 

Amanda Bailey

 

I am so sorry to hear this sad news. I’m not strictly a relative, but we were VERY close. I’m more than happy to pop around to his place and help clear out any documents that may be there.

But Graham isn’t the only person to unexpectedly pass away after being contacted by Amanda and Oliver. Soon, our intrepid writers will have to wonder whether something truly sinister isn’t at work, whether some supernatural force isn’t protecting the identity of the child from public scrutiny. As they race each other to the true identity of the baby, the ugliness of their shared past threatens to derail everything they’ve worked so hard for, both separately and together. Will they be able to put aside their differences long enough in order to expose the shocking truth?

Janice Hallett is not only a master of the murder mystery but a virtuoso of modern written forms. She expertly uses electronic correspondence, interview transcripts, and other 21st-century epistolary formats to present her wildly clever, thoroughly inventive tale of cultists, criminals, and the crime writers caught in their wake. I gasped aloud so many times while reading this book, which is both wickedly funny and subtly terrifying. I expected hilarity from having thoroughly enjoyed her previous books, The Appeal and The Christmas Appeal, both of which are laugh-out-loud funny (I haven’t gotten around to The Twyford Code yet but really want to!), The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels was far more grim than the books set in the world of the Fairway Players, but was still incredibly smart and satisfying. I loved it.