<p>Ian Tregillis's <i>Something More Than Night</i> is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas's vision of Heaven. It's a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.</p><p>Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making. </p><p>Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy to make their plan work.</p><p>Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a Marlowe novel - the mysterious dame who needs his help, getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting slipped a mickey.<br>Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand maguffin, <i>Something More Than Night</i> is a murder mystery for the cosmos. <br>A <i>Kirkus Reviews </i>Best Fiction Book of 2013</p>
