The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

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This was a difficult book to read. By that, I mean, difficult to follow. The book is written in the style of a collection of emails, audio file transcriptions, text messages, etc. etc., so there are many disjointed pieces of information, and no narration. Also, as a reader, we'll have to decipher what's important, what's not important, what's truth and what's lies, since obviously, some people lie. When you work it all through and start to understand the story, it is rewarding, because the story is quite interesting, although quite complex as well.

This book is a story about a cult group that called themselves the Alperton Angels. The group consists of 4 adults (Gabriel, Michael, Elemiah and Raphael) and 2 teenagers (Holly and Jonah). Gabriel was the cult's leader and had a very charismatic personality. In December 2003, there was a mass suicide when Michael, Elemiah, and Raphael were found dead with their throats slit. Gabriel was found barely alive and charged. They also charged him for the murder of his neighbor, Harpinder Singh, because, why not. Holly and Jonah ran away with what we assume was Holly's baby. Holly phoned the police. The police found Holly covered in blood and took her to the hospital but didn't see the baby, who was hidden in Holly's bag. The baby turned out to be unharmed, and is now turning 18. This case has been on everyone's mind, so both journalists Amanda and Oliver want to write a book about the baby. Amanda and Oliver don't get along, because they have a history together from 20 years ago when they were new in their careers and Oliver intentionally gave Amanda the wrong address for an after work get-together. She ended up in a bad part of town and got hurt pretty bad. He was simply jealous of her career success. He never bothered to apologize, so Amanda has been making plans to get back at him. When the publisher talked them into working together, Amanda decides to let Oliver fall into the deep end of the cult (by intentionally drugging him when he's near Gabriel or Alperton Angels locations, creating fake personas and emailing him fake information, among other things) as her payback. That ends up backfiring because Oliver starts believing the baby is Lady Louise Windsor, and since Gabriel said the baby is the antichrist, that means Lady Louise Windsor is the antichrist, so Oliver must kill her! Before I get too far ahead of myself, let's go back to the night in 2003. We eventually piece everything together and find out that Gabriel, Michael and Elemiah together kidnapped Don's baby. Don was an ex-special forces guy. They kidnapped the baby for ransom. It didn't go as planned. When Don showed up with the money, he had a team to kill the abductors. That's how Michael and Elemiah were killed. Holly grabbed the baby (Don's baby) and ran, since she wasn't sure who was firing shots and she wanted to protect the baby. She called the police and was taken to the hospital. Someone came to the hospital with papers showing they had the right to take the baby (part of Don's team), so the baby came back to Don. The Alperton Angels didn't commit suicide - when Harpinder died, the police believed it was Christopher Shenk that killed him. Harpinder was working undercover at a restaurant that was dealing drugs. Christopher Shenk also worked at the restaurant. Police arrested Shenk and tried to get him to confess. They ended up beating him to death and needed to cover up that death. When they learned about the kidnapping, they decided to shoot two birds with one stone, kill the Alperton Angels and pin the deaths of Harpinder and Shenk on them. They changed Christopher Shenk's name to Raphael to match the names of angels. (So Raphael was never an angel. His body was dumped there with the other angels by the police as part of the cover up.) Back to Oliver, he believes Lady Louise Windsor is the antichrist so he must kill her. Amanda tries to tell him otherwise but it's not working. He shows up at her school and plans on killing her (but she isn't at school that day). Amanda goes to the school to stop him, he shoots and kills Amanda. Lady Louise Windsor's security team kills him. But is that really what happened? Probably not. It's more likely the special forces (connected with Don) killed them both. Don can't let Amanda or Oliver discover the truth - he wants Gabriel to stay behind bars for life for what he did. The truth would surely set Gabriel free because he didn't kill anyone. Amanda stored all the information in a safety deposit box. Her assistant Ellie retrieved all this information but decided to do nothing with it because she doesn't want to be killed like Amanda was. It's up to us readers to decide on what to do with all this information.

(This is a very concise version of the story. I ignored many characters in this story because I didn't want the summary to get any longer. I admit this summary does not do the story justice.)

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