Fitzroy Maclean Angel Books in Order

This collection gathers Mike Ripley’s short crime fiction, including multiple adventures for streetwise chancer Fitzroy Maclean Angel. Thirteen stories and an unproduced TV script show him at work in pubs, backstreets and country houses, always skating close to trouble.

Now settled in rural Cambridgeshire with designer Amy and their baby, Angel agrees to track down a missing scriptwriter who has vanished from a film set. The search drags him through Manchester, Yorkshire and gangland feuds that are far darker than the jokes.

In this later Angel outing, a job that looks routine at first soon pulls him into the crossfire between sharp operators and far more dangerous criminals. As schemes turn violent, Angel relies on nerve, wit and sheer luck to stay one step ahead.

Facing impending parenthood and a move to the country, Fitzroy Maclean Angel is pushed into respectability at an all‑female detective agency. His first case, involving stolen cosmetic drugs and peculiar country‑house clients, proves anything but dull.

Dragged to a chaotic archaeological dig in Suffolk by his formidable mother, Angel swaps trowels for trouble when accidents and assaults plague the site. A hunt for Boudica’s lost royal mint masks a much more modern and deadly crime.

Angel’s quiet domestic life collapses when Amy’s secretive ex‑husband is abruptly back in prison and shady figures start sniffing around. With his wife refusing to talk, Angel’s only option is to break into jail himself, plunging into a violent, chaotic conspiracy.

Angel joins his fashion‑designer wife on the set of a big‑budget film at a British studio, only to realise the on‑set mishaps are calculated sabotage. Between a missing assistant, bogus insurance men and fragile egos, he has to keep both cast and crew alive.

Posing as a brewery troubleshooter in rural Kent, Angel infiltrates rival gangs smuggling cheap beer across the Channel. Running a failing pub with fashion models drafted in as barmaids, he discovers the real danger is hidden in the cargo his bosses will kill to protect.

After signing on as an all‑purpose assistant to a trio of cutting‑edge fashion designers, Angel finds himself juggling catwalk wars, drugs and extremist thugs. When a photographer friend is murdered, he has to work out which part of the glamour business turned lethal.

Family trouble drags Angel back to his rough roots when his wayward brother disappears into a spectacular drug deal. Using every ounce of his street sense, he tries to save his sibling without losing his marriage, his freedom or his temper.

Working as a private eye, Angel takes on an impoverished aristocrat obsessed with classic cars, a dubious religious movement and a solicitor he does not trust. Partnered with the formidable Veronica Blugden, he digs through privilege and piety to expose a very modern scam.

Flat broke, Angel juggles two jobs, one decidedly dodgy, and is pulled from London’s homeless encampments into a world of fantasy role‑playing that spills over into real violence. The city’s shadows prove much darker than any game.

Angel hits the road with a heavy‑metal band when an old friend is kidnapped over a lost truckload of illegal pills. Among roadies, gangsters and crashing cars, he races to find the missing drugs before the hostage’s time runs out.

An old university friend crashes through Angel’s skylight to his death, and the police use that shock to push Angel into infiltrating a violent animal‑rights group. The deeper he goes, the clearer it becomes that someone is planning more than protest.

Trying to help his glamorous neighbour Salome, Angel dives into the jittery world of late‑eighties high finance. Inside the London Stock Exchange, insider trading and coke‑fuelled scams prove far more dangerous than his usual illegal taxi fares and bar gigs.

Angel’s debut finds him hustling fares in a deregistered black cab and blowing jazz in Thatcher‑era London. A mysterious blonde, a vengeful cop, a gangster and a tax man turn his life into farce, with a peace camp and a stolen emerald at its chaotic heart.