I really enjoyed Frank Spinelli’s Perfect Flaw, a compelling mystery featuring a somewhat naive young doctor whose dream job quickly turned into a nightmare when his ambition and insecurities caused him to overlook some very serious flaws in the people around him to such an extent that he almost tanked his career. Angelo was a complex and engaging protagonist whose mistakes made him relateable (even as I wanted to smack some sense into him!), the book tackled some serious issues around healthcare in the US and the author did a great job of building the suspense and slowly injecting a growing sense of unease throughout the story.

Two years later, Angelo is still working in New York and living with his boyfriend, cop Jason Murphy, but is still struggling to deal with the guilt he continues to feel over the murder of Mia Garcia, one of his first patients at the Stanzione practice (Perfect Flaw). In the intervening time, he’s become somewhat obsessed with the the serial murderer the media has dubbed the “No Angels Wept Killer”, who has been targeting gay sex workers in LA. So when he’s approached by the producer of a well-known radio show/podcast and asked to talk about the murders, he jumps at the chance and prepares to fly out to LA, even though it means leaving Jason behind. (I had to ask myself why Angelo would have to fly all the way across the country for this – surely he could have hopped on Zoom or gone to a local studio and done the interview down the line!)

The show – A Thorny Mess – is presented by self-proclaimed “patron saint of the invisible LGBTQ+ community” Rocky Thorn, a shock-jock who is incredibly rude, extremely aggressive and completely full of herself. She ignores Angelo throughout the show and when she does finally speak to him, she asks him outright about the one thing he’d said he wasn’t willing to talk about – Mia Garcia’s death. By this time, Angelo has had enough and prepares to walk out, but not before he’s made his feelings clear on air – but afterwards, Thorn and the show’s prodicer, Wes, are so pleased with his take-no-crap attitude that they ask him to stay on as co-host for a couple of weeks. Angelo is torn – on the one hand, he wants to go home to Jason, who is currently on sick leave following an injury sustained during a chase. On the other, he can’t help being intruged by the mystery, and has a strong desire to help to maintain public awareness of the case and perhaps even to help solve it and get justice for the victims. When Jason unexpectedly shows up in LA, it starts to become clear that perhaps the NAW killer has a wider reach than Angelo had originally thought, and when the name of one particular evangelical church keeps cropping up during the investivation, Angelo takes a harder look at its founder – a former scientist and renowned ‘expert’ on conversion therapy – and it isn’t long before he’s being told, in no uncertain terms, to back off.

Like its predecessor, No Angels Wept deals with some difficult issues and contains a well-conceived, well-executed mystery with plenty of twists and turns and red herrings, but the character work just didn’t gel for me as well here. While Angelo has acquired a better sense of self-awareness over the past couple of years and thinks things through more than before, he’s still prone to making poor decisions, and the author once again does a very good job of conveying his increasing confusion. Angelo’s need to see justice done for the murder victims makes absolute sense – but the one element of the story that really didn’t work for me is fact that he considers Rocky and Wes (the show’s producer) his friends. The request for him to co-host the podcast because of how well he and Rocky gelled on air is ridiculous given that she does little but ignore and insult him. The three of them hardly know each other, yet within days – hours even – are calling themselves the “three amigos” and acting as though they’re ride-or-dies in their determination to get to the bottom of the murders. We’re in Angelo’s head for the whole story and it’s clear that he’s not completely comfortable around them, so I couldn’t understand why he would feel any sense of loyalty towards these people (especially after Rocky physically assaults him!) and I just did not buy that they were friends of any stripe.

Despite the slightly implausible set up and the fact that I disliked Wes and thought Rocky was certifiable (!), I enjoyed the story – it’s clever, well-paced and suspenseful, with a nail-biter of a climax. There are a few implausibly ‘jumped-to’ conclusions and the couple of sex scenes are pretty clunky (fade-to-black might have worked better), but the mystery is gripping and kept me eagerly turning the pages.