After their last case, DCI Ryan and his team are the stars of the show around Northumberland. The public is fickle though and when it becomes apparent there is a serial killer among them, they start demanding a quick solution. In this fast-paced, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down book, you’ll chase down the clues and put them together to find an unexpected and twisted villain at work.

In the early morning hours of a foggy, dreary, Good Friday in Newcastle upon Tyne, city gravedigger, Keith Wilson, drove his mini-digger machine into the West Road Cemetery. It might be a Bank Holiday, but death doesn’t wait for holidays. When he gets to the spot assigned for him to dig the grave, it appears to have already have a fresh burial. After checking with his dispatch and finding out he’s definitely at the correct spot, he looks at the grave and sees – OMGoodness, he sees a single dead eye, peering sightlessly at him through the soil.

DCI Ryan is at home with his fiancé Dr. Anna Taylor. The floor is strewn with wedding magazines. He loves her to distraction, but he just wants to get married, he doesn’t care what she chooses. So, when his mobile phone rings, and it flashes Control Room as the caller, he gleefully tells her – WORK!

The victim is a lovely red-haired lady in her early thirties who had been strangled. There is nothing to identify her, but she is posed to look like an Angel with arms overhead and blouse torn and spread to look like wings. Her burial site also included a note saying: Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. To Ryan’s surprise, DS Phillips recognizes that as being what a priest says when he is absolving the dead of their sins: ‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. What sins did the murderer think this lovely young woman had committed?

Ryan’s team also catches another case, and since the two cases aren’t related, he assigns it to DI Denise MacKenzie and DC Jack Lowerson. MacKenzie and Lowerson step into a gruesome scene. The badly decomposed body of a sixty-five-year-old woman, lying on the floor of her home. She’s not a well-liked woman, so nobody notices that she hasn’t been seen for a week. It looks like they have their work cut out for them just to get a timeline for when she was last seen.

Ryan and Phillips feel the urgency to solve the case as the bodies of other red-headed, early-thirties, women are found in graves awaiting burials for other people. Who is killing these ladies? What sins have they committed for which they need absolution? Why are they posed as angels?

It takes all of Ryan’s team to finally identify and apprehend this twisted murderer. I figured out who it was early on, but there are lots of red-herrings and twists-and-turns to throw you off and make you doubt your suppositions.

I listened to the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the narrator. I like his voice, but he does seem to have a narrower range of voices and it is often difficult to tell which character is speaking. ( )

The DCI Ryan series is going from strength to strength and it is nigh on impossible to contain my excitement when a new book is released. Angel is the hotly anticipated fourth book in the series and whilst you absolutely could read it as a stand-a-lone, you really don't want to miss out on the other books in the series. I feel like I read Angel so fast that I want to read it again, but why stop there? I actually want to read the whole series all over again because it really is that good. I admit to a slight bias as the series is set in my native North East, but the setting could be anywhere as it is the fast-paced thrills of the amazing storylines that whip DCI Ryan fans into a frenzy.

DCI Ryan and his colleagues in Northumbria CID are just getting ready to enjoy their Easter bank holiday weekend when a body is found. What is unusual about it is that it has been left posed as an angel in a freshly dug grave. When another body is found in similar circumstances, it is clear that a serial killer is on the loose in Newcastle. A few miles away in Rothbury, an older lady is found dead in her house. On closer examination the pathologist rules strangulation as the cause of death, the same as the bodies in the cemeteries. Could there be a link? As Ryan and his team go on the hunt for a killer, they find that it's not just the cause of death that links all of the victims...but the colour of their hair. All of the 'angels' were redheads, just like Ryan's colleague, Denise MacKenzie.

Unbelievably fast-paced, Angel ends on such a cliffhanger that would have had all readers, including myself, screaming "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!". Not just because of what happens at the end but because the book itself had come to an end. And the award for the most suspenseful ending of 2016 goes to.....LJ Ross.

I took my copy of Angel on a little tour of the North East on a rare sunny day and ashamedly paid my first visit to The Angel of the North. I actually live a few minutes away from this impressive landmark and, although I had driven past it on numerous occasions, had never actually been up close. I was also intrigued by the church mentioned in the book, during the brilliant earring search - St Andrews. I remember the old bus station in Worswick Street but I never realised there was a church opposite until it was one of the settings in Angel. The church itself is quite impressive and a hidden gem in the city of Newcastle. During my visit, I also learnt that Worswick Street was named after Father James Worswick who founded the church in the 18th Century.

The amount of detailed research that goes into these books is phenominal, it makes them interesting and true to life, although there aren't that many murders in Newcastle, honest! If a book could give a virtual hug to a region Angel, and all of the DCI Ryan books, certainly show the author's love for her home town. It just proves that you can take the girl out of Newcastle...

Angel is an affectionate virtual kiss for the North East. So many areas of this beautiful part of the country are mentioned. If you haven't read Holy Island, Sycamore Gap and Heavenfield I urge you to add these books to your reading list - you really won't be disappointed. With this fourth book in the scintillating DCI Ryan series, it is no surprise to find LJ Ross repeatedly and deservedly positioned at the top of the Amazon charts.

As I am on tenterhooks for book five, I might just have to read all four books again to satisfy my DCI Ryan craving. I think there should be a Ryan Anonymous group for all of those struggling to cope with the cliffhanger in Angel - hello my name's Michelle and I'm a Ryan addict. These books are my most recommended to friends and family and I truly cannot wait for the next instalment.

I chose to read an ARC of Angel and this is my honest opinion. ( )