Duel For A Dark Angel by Marc Marais

Duel For A Dark Angel
First NEL paperback edition April 1975.




A wave of sickening murders hits the streets of Paris. The bodies of beautiful women are being found, almost casually, in rivers or up back alleys, by passers-by. The corpses have been killed and mutilated with a brutality that rivals Jack the Ripper. Claude Delorme, of the special branch of Paris Sûret, faces growing pressure to solve these crimes as panic mounts daily among the Parisians.

But he is faced by a baffling lack of clues and suspects. After many false starts and near disaster he at last stumbles upon what seems to be the trail, yet it leads him to the twilight world of the supernatural. Those who dabble with the Occult he finds, are now playing with human lives. Against the shadow of menace that threatens not only Delorme, but the whole of Paris, police methods are useless. It can only be dealt with on its own terms.

I’m going through a bit of an occult thriller thing at the moment. Having just finished the Strickland Demon in practically one sitting, I moved straight on to this one, and it’s turning out to be just as engrossing!

Set in Paris in 1974, Duel for a Dark Angel follows the cantankerous, chain-smoking Chief Inspector Claude Delorme as he tracks down the killer responsible for a string of horrific murders involving Paris’ most glamorous super models. (Come to think of it, I’m not sure we had supermodels in the 70’s but if there were, then these girls were it). The press suspect these crimes are linked to a Satanic cult (the inverted crosses carved on the victims’ foreheads might be a bit of a clue) but Claude appears to be having none of it, adamantly maintaining their mutilations and mashed uteri are merely the result of consensual sex gone horribly wrong.

What the press don’t realise is that Claude is playing his cards very close to his chest, using his outlandish theory as a public smokescreen to mask his own undercover operation. He suspects the killer is a sadist who must be very well known and respected within the fashion industry, for how else does he get so close to all these beautiful women?

And Claude’s right of course. The reader learns fairly early on that the killer is the very rich, very well connected Comte Gilles de la Tour de Ville - a man who drives a scarlet Lamborghini and lives in a castle kitted out with its very own Satanic Temple. Hmm, he sounds quite a catch ladies, n’est-ce pas? But no. We first meet the Comte as he is ‘entertaining’ victim number 9 and it is not pretty (and far too gory for me to detail here).

Victim no. 9’s body is discovered washed up in the Loire valley, around the same time we are introduced to potential victim no. 10 - the very beautiful model Marie-Ange. As a full moon waxes over the horizon, she is becomes increasingly edgy, sensing a sinister presence following her. Lucky for her, she is engaged to the highly intuitive police surgeon Dr Phillippe Bonsard. It is him and his friend Marbot, who save Marie-Ange’s life, shooting the Comte dead as he tries to abduct her.

Or so they think. As the Comte lies dying in the ambulance, riddled with bullets, he starts mumbling stuff about Satan, about eternal marriage to the great darkness, of reaching for Marie-Ange from beyond the grave. A few days later, Phillipe attends the Comte’s funeral. Here he learns a bit more about this strange man and what might have led him down the left hand path (the trauma of living through the occupation, an evil witchy mother, a good catholic education gone bad…) As the marble slab is laid over his tomb, a huge crack appears, terrifying the small congregation of curiosity-seekers attending the funeral.

But Phillipe is not too bothered. His sweetheart Marie-Ange has recovered from her ordeal and they are soon to be married. However, following a disastrous game of planchette at her hen party and with the advent of another full moon, it’s not long before Marie-Ange finds herself terrorised by a malevolent force smashing its way into this world through her bedroom mirror. Again, it’s her quick thinking fiancé who just manages to save her from the forces of evil – for now. As she lies trapped in a coma, Phillipe faces his worse fears, reluctantly seeking the help of the enigmatic occultist De Mauchaud – but has he left it too late?

Well I’m really enjoying this one and would definitely recommend it. Only one slight quibble with the writing – being a satanic super-villain, the Comte naturally has evil looking eyes, described by the author as prune dark, flecked with amber. This phrase, prune dark, flecked with amber, turns up with steady regularity as our killer glowers and glares his way down dark alleys and through cracked mirrors. But prunes? Prunes were what my Dad would eat when he needed to poo, so this kind of dampened the supernatural suspense for me somewhat. Otherwise though, a very fine story!