Janet Neel’s novels featuring the dynamic and accomplished civil servant, Francesca Wilson, and the competent and ambitious Detective Inspector John McLeish are a delight. Not only do they deliver highly polished and well-plotted crime mysteries, but they capture the atmosphere of Whitehall marvellously. Although they are now around thirty years old, and many aspects of working life in Whitehall has changed, their portrayal of the role and attitudes of the civil service remains valid.

This novel opens with the brutal murder in West London of Bill Fireman, a management accountant working for the Yorkshire textile manufacturer Britex. He had been down in London to attend a conference and to visit some suppliers, and was attacked on the way back to his hotel. The discovery of the body is reported to Edgware Road police station, and the investigation is assigned to Detective Inspector John McLeish. Initial indications suggested that Fireman may have been the victim of a random mugging, probably by someone desperate to fund a drug addiction. McLeish is not convinced, and huis copper’s intuition tells him that there is something further behind it. While returning from the scene of the murder, McLeish has a chance encounter with local resident, Francesca Wilson, with whom he is immediately smitten.

In the meantime, Britex has come to the attention of Francesca Wilson and her colleagues in the Department for Trade and Industry. Having traded successfully, if never spectacularly, for many years, Britex has recently found itself struggling to compete with cheap imports from Easter Europe and Asia. Orders are diminishing, and the company’s future looks bleak. The DTI has become aware of the difficulties and is considering whether it might intervene. Mcleish’s inventigation becomes increasingly entwined with the DTI review of britex, and before long there are further murders.

Francesca and McLeish are both appealing characters, being assertive and very capable in their respective fields, yet also sensitive and alert to the emotional currents swirling around them. Francesca also has a beguiling family – her considerable self-assurance (I know, I know, a dirty word) stems from having four younger brothers whom she helped bring up following her father’s tragically early death. All of her brothers, and indeed Francesca herself, are excellent singers, and the book is liberally strewn with enchanting references to different choral works, and several plugs for the various departmental and civil service- wide choirs.

All told, a very entertaining novel and the first volume in an appealing series. ( )

As usual for a mystery novel set in London, the city itself is a principle character. There really isn't a mystery, the story is all milieu and romance. The book was originally published in the late '80s, by an author who was nearly 50. People with dyed hair occasionally make an appearance, not as characters, but as window dressing. ( )

Janet Neel’s “Death Among the Dons” was my crime novel discovery of last year, and so I decided to read her series about DI John McLeish and high-flying civil servant Francesca Wilson from the beginning.

”Death’s Bright Angel” starts with what could just be an ordinary London mugging, except that the attacker of the elderly accountant from Yorkshire does not content himself with taking his victim’s valuables – among them the expensive watch just received for twenty-five years’ of service and very proudly worn – but stops to make sure that Bill Fireman is well and truly dead.

The mystery in this volume is nowhere near as interesting and sophisticated as the one in “Dons” but it provides the stage for the two protagonists to meet and for us to get to know both them as well as Francesca’s large family. And as in “Dons”, it was fascinating to read about Francesca’s bosses and colleagues – people so competent and confident it’s a marvel to behold. Francesca herself has got to be one of the most accomplished heroines of 1980s crime literature (probably taking after her author).

For reasons unclear to me (and an e-mail enquiry went unanswered), Ostara has republished only four of the seven Wilson/McLeish books but I have tracked down a used copy of another edition of the second volume and am looking forward to my next outing with what may be British crime lit’s most interesting power couple since Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.