Customer Reviews

Midnight Angels: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I loved Street Boys. Gangster was another favorite. The list of books by this author that I've recommended goes on and on. I saw this book at the airport bookstore and needed a book for a long flight. OK, I thought, easy winner even at full price. What a mistake! It was so bad I gave up and tried watching the movie. That was worse, so I went back to the book just to pass the time.

The plot revolves around a young woman who is both groomed for her task of uncovering lost art works and woefully unprepared for the people she's certain to meet in the process. She makes friends with the wrong people, and fails to trust those she should. She moves from one implausible risky situation to another with miraculous luck. Guards who should be watchful are distracted; doors that should be heavily secured are opened by or for her. Plots within plots, cross and doublecross form the background tapestry. Secret passages that certainly don't exist and twisted history (along with a few verifiable tidbits) make the plotting too hard to swallow.

I'm willing to suspend normal levels of disbelief for a good plot. This one asked me to do that way too many times for a plot that was barely able to tie most of its threads together.

Give this one a pass.

I was soooo looking forward to this book - Florence, my favorite European city -- and art. What a combination! I even BOUGHT the book, and I rarely buy fiction.

Well, I was greatly disappointed. The plot and premise were just plain ridiculous. So many stupid things were done by the characters. Kate was such a lightweight and all of a sudden she was thrust into something for which she was ill-prepared. Murder and mayhem in the streets of Florence. COME ON, now!

When did the "religious artifact quest thriller" become a genre? As the great John Gardner once observed: in order to write junk fiction, one must have an authentic junk mind.

Professor Richard Dylan Edwards is a highly regarded Michelangelo expert. He is also the leader of the secretive Vittoria Society that recovers stolen art treasures to return them to their rightful owner. His group seeks three missing Michelangelo statues, the Midnight Angels that most art historians believe never existed beyond legend. Also searching for the statues are the as secretive Immortals whose leader Raven wants them for his latest nefarious clever scheme.

Dr. Edward's top student, his ward Kate Westcott, heads to Italy to study first hand Michelangelo. In Florence, she and her art student boyfriend Marco Scudarti search the museums and galleries that seem everywhere in the fabled city. When they find the Midnight Angels, they become targets of the deadly ruthless Immortals who have no remorse killing innocent bystanders to obtain the three statues; only Captain Rumore seems on their side when he is not pondering arresting them.

This is an action packed thriller that grips the audience from the moment the American student and her Italian boyfriend begin exploring the streets of Florence and never slows down as readers will join them on their perilous tour. Fast-paced and filled with action, fans relish this exhilarating art world thriller as the two secretive societies and the Rome Art Squad, all with different intentions, converge on Kate and Marco.

Harriet Klausner

I enjoy this genre very much and the best books, like DaVinci Code and Rule of Four, are intricately plotted andkeep you on the edge until the very end. I could see the ending of this book halfway through. Utterly predictable. Supposedly brilliant good guys let the bad guy get away multiple times then, one at a time, they each fall into traps and die at the hands of that same villain. It's like they all had death wishes.The same good versus evil argument is made over and over again. All of this to set up the final confrontation between the heroine and the villain. Guess how that goes? All of this so hidden works of art can remain hidden, but at a different location.

I've enjoyed Carcaterra's previous books. This one looked like a "can't miss" to me -- good author, locale that's one of my favorites, subject that appeals to me. Everything that augurs for an enjoyable read. However, this was an amateurish effort in a genre where the gap between amateurs and experts is extremely wide -- much wider than could be bridged by either the author's professed love of the locale or his skill as a writer. He cites in his acknowledgments friends, relatives and professional editors who read, offered suggestions, and edited the book. Apparently none of them knew enough to tell him the difference between "pedal" and "peddle"in the last few pages of the book or between "elicit" and "illicit", or any one of several other similar gaffes in the book.

I've only been to Florence a few times, compared to his professed "many times", but I've never seen a place in the city on the banks of the Arno River where you can "look over the city" as he has a character doing (from Piazza Michelangelo perhaps, but not from the banks of the Arno), or heard the Arno "roar" as he says in another passage (although it might have roared in the 1966 flood; I wasn't there then!). Those are only a couple of the descriptions of the city that didn't ring true to me.

The book was disappointing -- a long way from what I had expected it to be. The author would do well to stick to his stories of the gritty streets of America.

This book was so good, suspenseful and frightening that I could not put it down. I am recommending it to everyone!

"...the Raven may have bitten off a bigger bite than even he can swallow --- two desperate men and a young woman out to claim her destiny. That's a powerful force to push back against."

The young woman is Kate Wescott, and she has a dangerous legacy, one that she views as a daunting challenge. Her parents died when she was a small child in an attempt to preserve that legacy. And her guardian, Professor Richard Dylan Edwards, has been keeping it alive ever since. Now, as a university student, is Kate ready to claim her destiny?

Recently arrived in Florence, Italy, Kate prepares to continue her art studies, with a heavy emphasis on Michelangelo. She loves Florence with the passion her parents did. She cherishes their memory, believing them to be nearly saints for what she views as their selfless pursuit of lost or stolen masterpieces. Professor Edwards has perpetuated that belief.

The Wescotts formed the Vittoria Society in order to do just that, with their goal to return the recovered art to its rightful or intended owner. In the early days of the Society, things hummed along smoothly. Then one of their own, a young man named David, turned against them. Faced with the prospect of amassing a huge fortune, he simply couldn't resist the temptation to sell whatever he found. So he formed his own society, The Immortals, and transformed himself into the Raven. What followed were years of bloody battles essentially between good and evil.

For the decades the Vittoria Society and The Immortals have both existed, whenever they clash, they leave bodies in their wake. Now the time for a final showdown has come. While Kate doesn't know for certain that she is intended to succeed Professor Edwards as the next leader of the Vittoria Society, she does realize that she is more than a simple university student majoring in art history. She also is aware that a showdown is imminent.

With her new-found friend Marco Scudarti, Kate spawns a plan to trace what she hopes will be a previously unknown piece of sculpture. So far, everything she has learned gives her confidence that she is close. And she isn't the only one who believes that. The Immortals are right on her heels as she and Marco dash through the cobbled streets, in and out of the Uffizi, across the Ponte Vecchio, and around the Boboli Gardens in their efforts to elude the Raven and stay alive. But all this activity hasn't escaped the eyes of the police. Into the fray comes Detective Rumore of the Rome Art Squad --- an elite group of hand-picked policemen representing the best of the best. So, with all these factions at play, it's easy to see how gunfire and mayhem erupt all over the Renaissance city.

It doesn't take long before collectors and criminals alike catch wind of a new discovery: Michelangelo's fabled Midnight Angels. Suddenly, Kate and Marco can't make a move without stalkers, kidnappers and common thieves in hot pursuit.

MIDNIGHT ANGELS is loads of fun and packed with serious tension. Chock-full of thrilling chase scenes, Lorenzo Carcaterra's latest is sure to please mystery fans as well as travel hounds, history lovers and art aficionados.

Great book by a great author. I've read all of Lorenzo Carcaterra's books (Both Fiction & Non-Fiction) and would recommend them to anybody who enjoys a good crime story.