Angel Fire

Greeley comes up with his wickedest, most winsome puffery yet in this fast-paced, romantic fantasy-thriller about a Nobel Prize-winning biologist falling in love with his guardian angel. Or guardian seraph, to be more exact - seraphs being the highest order of angels, and Sean Seamus Desmond's guardian being none other than Gabriel (of the Annuciation and the trumpet) himself, appearing here as a human woman, Gabriella Light. And what a woman! - enough to boil Desmond's hormones: "silver hair, smooth girlish face, full voluptuous classical figure," tall and elegant, altogether a sexual bombshell when she's not turning into a curtain of lights or a column of fire. Gabriella takes on human flesh to protect Desmond from the KGB and other malefactors soon after he wins The Prize; it seems that all sorts of baddies want to harness or silence his work on punctuated evolution, which includes speculation about advanced aliens who sound remarkably like angels. Shoot-outs, bombings, shower massacres and other mayhem follow this very odd couple as they banter their way across America, England, Sweden, and East Germany, ending in confrontation with a hilarious, self-important agent who solemnly declares that "there are no angels, only socialist aliens." While on the road, Desmond pursues his lickerish fancies and blows raspberries at the Establishment; Gabriella remakes his life by sprucing up his wardrobe, renewing his Faith, teaching him once again to love. Like all Greeley's finest, this relies on lovable characters, cardboard action, and puckish digs at the Powers That Be. Here, Gabriella takes on the Church while Desmond pokes away at stuffy academics. Occult researchers, feminists, and liberation theologians also take a pratfall. This is Greeley at his most leprechaunish; altogether a blast. (And by the way - yes, angels do it, but not the way humans do.) (Kirkus Reviews)