Book Review: Blood of Angels

Spoilers!

A good legal thriller always hits the spot for me because I find legal minutiae itself — navigating the thicket and morass of our legal system to ascertain guilt or innocence — thrilling. But add in the hallmarks of a thriller, like murder, kidnapping, and mystery, and I’m all about it. Reed Arvin’s 2005 book, Blood of Angels, had all the aforementioned, along with some interesting Nashville, Tennessee-specific demographic dynamics that made for a compelling, fast-paced read. I’d never previously read Reed Arvin before, but Blood of Angels made me want to continue doing so.

Thomas Dennehy is a pretty good guy, a former JAG officer, he’s now the assistant district attorney in Davidson County, Tennessee. I hedge with “pretty good guy” because he’s on the prosecutor’s side and sends people to death row to be executed. I’m morally opposed to the death penalty, and for what it’s worth, Thomas doesn’t seem as adamant about it as his District Attorney boss does. More of a, the state has the death penalty and I’m an officer of the state, ergo, sort of thing. His most recent execution is Wilson Owens, convicted and executed for slayings at a local grocery store. Interestingly enough, an EMT, Charles Bridges, who responded to the scene, was also charged with one of the deaths. He messed up trying to save one of the victims and on the scene, police realized he was high on methamphetamine.

As it turns out, a new confession and a new organization (a fictionalized version of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that helps exonerate wrongfully convicted people — indeed, the Innocence Project has exonerated 200 death row inmates) is arguing Owens was wrongfully convicted and executed. It’s one thing to exonerate a living man; it’s another to exonerate a dead man. It makes the state, rightly, look bad, and it would make Thomas look bad. This confession from an incarcerated inmate leads them ostensibly to the gun used in the grocery store killings. If it proves to be the gun, then that is strong evidence in favor of Owens being wrongfully convicted and executed.

Meanwhile, there’s another capital murder case on Thomas’ docket: Moses Bols, a Sudanese man, is charged in the rape and murder of a white woman. Even before the Owens case hangs over Bols’ case, the demographic tensions in Davidson County, Tennessee is at a powder keg ready to explode. There are the Sudanese (and many other nationalities) refugees, who are rather aloof in this foreign land, with unfathomable trauma backstopping them, and then the Nationites, lower class white people who live in the Nations, a small neighborhood. These groups live next to each other in West Tennessee. (For what it’s worth, the Nations neighborhood seems far different than even 20 years ago when Arvin wrote about it.) The two sides even clash in a riotous episode at one point in the book.

Also thrown on to Thomas’ plate is Fiona Towns, the local reverend who is vehemently opposed to the death penalty and has been trying to help the Sudanese refugees, including Bols. They are unlikely bedfellows, literally, because they’re on opposite sides of the issue and case, but Thomas admires Fiona’s principled stand and courage and Fiona, being the person she is, sees the good in Thomas, that his moral compass could turn against the death penalty.

Unfortunately for Thomas, the final piece of the puzzle is that Charles Bridges, going under a different name and looking markedly different, is out of prison and seeking his revenge against Thomas. He’s the one who set up the whole faux-confession in an attempt to taint the Owens execution and thereby, Thomas and the DA’s office. A whip-smart forensic analyst with the county realizes the grocery store murder weapon was recently moved putting a giant hole in the theory that Owens wasn’t the killer. It didn’t occur to me until now, but Bridges is also the one who set off a pipe bomb near the church windows that nearly killed Thomas and Fiona. Bridges also killed Thomas’ cat and caused his dad’s old truck to burn to the tires. But that’s all the least of it. In the last 100 or so pages, Bridges kills Carl, the barely hours-retired assistant DA and Thomas’ mentor. I knew when Arvin kept building up Carl’s retirement and retirement party that something would happen to Carl. It was still sad to see transpire! Then, because you just knew the security measures weren’t going to be enough, Bridges kidnaps Jazz, Thomas’ 10 year old daughter. She was living with Thomas’ ex-wife and her new husband, a multi-millionaire surgeon in a mansion. Like I said, those security measures didn’t matter.

Thomas, not so much the FBI on the scene or the new husband’s millions, is what rescues Jazz from certain death (Bridges attempt at mimicking execution via the gas chamber). Bridges’ last effort to get at Thomas is to threaten to kill Fiona. Even when Fiona has the opportunity to shoot Bridges dead to rescue Thomas, she doesn’t. Instead, she flings herself at Bridges. Thomas is able to get the upper hand in the melee, but is stabbed in the gut for his troubles and Bridges causes Thomas to shoot him dead.

Afterward, Thomas and Fiona realize their relationship can’t even reach the point of being a relationship given her call to the ministry and his new endeavor: leaving the DA’s office and going fishing, literally. She was right about him after all. Oh, and it should be said that Bols, who initially confessed out of fear, was innocent, too. The woman he was accused of raping and killing was actually murdered by her boyfriend, who then tried to make it seem like Bols was the culprit. The death penalty is orchestrated by men and as such, is fallible, which is why it’s inhuman to continue its practice.

Interestingly, Arvin was a record producer, keyboardist, and then writer. He’s only written five books and Blood of Angels was his most recent. For someone who doesn’t appear to have a background in the law, I thought he wrote about it rather convincingly, dramatic fictional elements aside. Too bad he stopped writing, as this was quite good.