Sidney Sheldon's Angel Of The Dark:Review

Rating:  3.25 out of 5

I visited a book fair recently. It was awesome and I found many good reads there (Ha!).This was one of them.

I have read about four Sidney Sheldon's books and I found them interesting. This one, despite its title, is not fully written by Sidney Sheldon. Its author is Tilly Bagshawe. She built this story on some unpublished work of Sidney Sheldon. But this story is not disappointing at all.

The story begins when a very-old-very-rich man, Andrew Jakes is murdered in cold blood and his wife-Angela Jakes, is brutally raped. Due to lack of evidence the police fail to pin the accomplice and the case is closed. The wife disappears and leaves all her inheritance i.e. four hundred million dollars to charity. Everyone seems to move on except for Danny McGuire. He ruins himself in the process of trying to find her, Angela Jakes and the murderer but to no good. He then joins the Interpol and marries again, to get over her.

Back in LA, Matt, the long estranged son of Andrew Jakes is fascinated by this story and wants to a documentary on it. But it soon becomes his passion and later his life.

Story has an interesting plot spanning over France, America, Hong Kong and India. The author clearly has done her research. She got most facts right. The technicalities are well taken care of too but at a certain points in the story one may notice a few loop-holes, like wouldn't they have analyzed the DNA samples of the victims and if one disables the infrared security the surveillance cams would still be on and a few others but for the story's sake it’s better to ignore them. 

The writing is well paced and keeps one hooked to the story. The story doesn't lag overall and there is no rambling like one may find in thrillers generally, where whole chapters are written in building the characters. The characters are shaped well and are interestingly real. The leads i.e. the wives are portrayed as goddesses with hearts deeper than the ocean. The detectives are rather naive and fail to look at what is right in front of them. I don't want to talk more about the characters because then you'll know the end.

I always tend to figure out the end of a story by the time I am like half way through it and I am rarely wrong and this book was no exception to that. Also the funny thing in this story is the portrayal of the men. Most of them (except of maybe Inspector Liu and the mastermind of the murders), are either too naive or either too stupid or both. They are shallow in a sense that they wag their tails for a woman who they have just met and just because of her beauty wag their tails after her, even to a point that they cheat on their spouse, leave their pregnant wife, their family and go completely broke. 

The end of this story could have been better if the author would have just omitted the last two chapter, they take the fun out. For the last time I wanted to believe a man would choose his wife but again he abandons her while she is pregnant and chooses the so called love. Typical men huh! That is why I earlier wrote that the characters are interestingly real. 

Thus his is a good paced thriller which would keep you hooked for the major part of it and Could pass for a weekend read or a book one wants to read while commuting. I read it while travelling to and from my college in the metro.