It’s midtown Manhattan, 1959. A private eye is called to a meeting with an elegant and mysterious man to search for a singer who disappeared after returning from World War II. The detective’s name is Harry Angel, the man who hires him is Louis Cypre, and the missing musician is Johnny Favorite. The names themselves should give you enough to think about. While William Hjorstberg’s Falling Angel is written with the elements of a neo-noir thriller, the underlying theme is that of a search for a lost identity...maybe. Possibly it is more of a search to lose an identity.
The literary trick that Hjorstberg plays is to give away the solution to the mystery at the beginning of the story. The discerning reader should have no trouble figuring out that Louis Cyphre is Lucifer, otherwise known as Satan. Harry the Falling Angel is an all too obvious reference to Satan, the falling angel in Milton’s Paradise Lost (that epic poem that foreshadows almost every literary theme that has been explored since the 18th century). Johnny Favorite references Milton too since Satan was God’s favorite angel before he got kicked out of paradise for not staying in his place and trying to usurp the throne of God. Combining the names “Favorite” and “Angel” should provide a huge clue as to where this mystery is headed. So should the fact that Johnny Favorite fought in Algeria during World War II, received a facial injury that required plastic surgery when he returned, was committed to an asylum, and then was taken away. Harry Angel also fought in Algeria during World War II and had plastic surgery to repair his nose. There are further clues all throughout the book indicating the relationship between the two.
Angel’s whereabouts after returning from the war are barely mentioned. Cyphre sets him the task of finding out what happened to Johnny Favorite after he was taken from the asylum. The surface mystery of the plot is solved for any reader who can put two and two together. That is deliberate. Hjorstberg wants that part to be obvious because Harry Angel’s investigation is about a deeper issue.
Angel’s hunt for Johnny Favorite starts as standard noir detective work. Each character he encounters gives him a new piece of the puzzle and the people he encounters become more colorful as he goes along. He starts by questioning the morphine addicted doctor at the asylum where Johnny Favorite lived. Then he meets with a pianist in a blues band that once played in Favorite’s band before the war. This leads Angel to an Obeah cult led by the manbo Epiphany Proudfoot, the light-skinned daughter of Evangeline Proudfoot who was Johnny Favorite’s Afro-Caribbean lover. Epiphany’s light skin is of major importance. Figure it out for yourself.
On the caucasian side of town, Angel pays a visit to Margaret Krusemark, the one time fiancee of Johnny Favorite. Margaret is an astrologer and practitioner of black magic. She is also a key character in understanding why Favorite was taken from the asylum and what happened after he left. Just as important is Margaret’s father, Ethan Krusemark, who is the CEO of a maritime shipping company with an office on the top floor of the Chrysler Building.
The characters who provide Angel with the most information about Johnny Favorite all get murdered in brutal ways. Note that none of them recognize Harry Angel when they meet him even though, knowing the secret of his identity, they probably should. Other people that Harry Angel questions are mostly musicians who played with Favorite before the war. As minor characters, they have less to say and likewise end up surviving.
Harry Angel’s detective methods are creepy but standard for noir fiction. He impersonates people, he lies, he breaks into homes and offices, and he spies on people by watching them through windows or eavesdropping. He also shows up, secretly and uninvited at an Obeah ceremony and a black mass a la J.K. Huysmans’s La Bas. Is he just a curious voyeur or is he unwittingly being summoned by the cultists? Harry Angel also spends a lot of time in the lower sections of New York, going to bars, visiting Coney Island in the off season to talk to carnies and sideshow freaks, patronizes Epiphany Proudfoot’s herb shop in Harlem, and watching Louis Cyphre perform a magic show at the legendary Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus on 42nd Street (the space is now occupied by Madame Tussaud’s wax museum). It’s almost surprising that Herman Slater’s Magickal Childe book store is never mentioned, though I suppose it didn’t exist in 1959 when the novel is set. These dwellings contrast starkly with Angel’s luncheon with Cyphre at an upscale French restaurant and Ethan Krusemark’s corporate office at the top of the Chrysler Building. Remember the title is Falling Angel in reference to Satan’s fall from paradise. Also don’t forget that Milton portrayed Satan as a sympathetic character in Paradise Lost.
On a side note, there is a subtle anti-racism theme in that Harry Angel mixes freely and comfortably with the African-American characters who are also portrayed almost entirely in a positive light. The police following Harry Angel are also bigots in an ugly way and are just as offended by Angel’s sexual affair with the mulatta Epiphany Proudfoot as they are with the homicides they investigate. And Louis Cyphre gives a sermon to an all-Black congregation of Pentacostals while Harry Angel sits unnoticed in the audience.
If Harry Angel is searching for Johnny Favorite he is also searching for the identity of Louis Cyphre. The surface connection of “Louis Cyphre” and “Lucifer” may be obvious from the start, in fact so obvious that’s it’s hard to understand why Harry Angel never makes the connection, but a deeper semiotic unpacking of the name reveals more. In cryptography, the word “cyphre” or “cipher” means a key that unlocks a code. It translates a scrambled coded language into a decoded language that is understandable, hence the word “decipher”. So understanding Louis Cyphre’s identity and the role he plays in Angel’s life reveals what the dilemma is all about. Looking deeper into the name, “cyphre” is a French word derived from the Arabic al-sifr. In old Arabic, this word means “emptiness” or “nothingness”. Note that when Cyphre addresses the Pentacostal congregation he appears under the name Al-Sifr while wearing an Arabic style turban. When applied to a person, a cipher can also be an unimportant person or a person of no consequence, a persona non grata. Yet Louis Cyphre seems to be the deus ex machina, the puppet master, of the whole story. So what does it mean if the puppet master is a nobody? Hjorstberg appears to be telling us that Louis Cyphre isn’t real; in other words, he is an imaginary projection of Harry Angel’s darker motivations. Harry Angel, in his inner struggle of good against evil, believes Cyphre is killing the associates of Johnny Favorite and arranging circumstances to implicate him. But if Cyphre doesn’t exist, it must be Angel doing the killing and tricking himself into thinking he is innocent by displacing the crimes onto an imaginary antagonist. Or maybe Harry Angel actually knows what murders he is committing and Louis Cyphre is a symbol of his sadistic impulses he is unable to control.
So if Johnny Favorite became Harry Angel after the war, as Ethan Krusemark explains, and Louis Cyphre is a disassociated projection of Angel’s evil urges, what exactly is Harry Angel searching for? He probably isn’t searching for anything but an escape route from his past. Johnny Favorite sold his soul to the Devil for fame and success then he thought he could trick the Devil by transferring his soul into the body of Harry Angel. He succeeded to the point where the people who know the most about him are unable to recognize his current form as Harry Angel. So Angel has to murder them to erase any last traces of memory attached to Johnny Favorite. But Angel can’t escape from Louis Cyphre because Cyphre is an aspect of himself. But if this interpretation is wrong and Cyphre literally is Satan, where does that leave Harry Angel? The hapless detective is little more than a marionette being manipulated by Cyphre to do the Devil’s work without realizing it. But in any case, Harry Angel is a man trying to leave his past behind. At the age of 39, he is entering into a midlife identity crisis while trying to come to terms with his past by eliminating anybody he was connected to in a meaningful way. In this endeavor, he fails. Once you’ve sold your soul there is no escape. Maybe there is no cure for evil. Maybe Harry Angel is an embodiment of Satan himself. Maybe he has too much pride to repent.
How can we be sure any interpretation is correct? We can’t. William Hjortsberg has given us what I call a Devil’s Ending. When the first and second layers of the mystery are solved, we are left with a deeper mystery that can’t be resolved. The deeper certainty is in territory that is too murky and so far beyond our grasp that we can only shoot in the dark when trying to solve it. You can twist your mind into knots trying to make sense of it all, but there can never be any closure. The Devil’s Ending is a good literary device that, when used effectively, makes a book stay with you long after you finish reading it simply because it leaves some questions open ended.
Speaking of writing style, this novel evokes the sensations of Art Deco in its use of language and story telling. Without a doubt, New York is the greatest city for Art Deco architecture in the world. Art Deco has smooth and shiny surfaces, sharp lines, bold curvatures, and planes of flatness that are layered to create the illusion of depth. It draws you in by suggesting the presence of something hidden beneath the surface. It uses occult motifs borrowed from astrology and Pagan pantheons. It is a style that reaches back to the ancient statuary of Babylon and the angularity of Egyptian hieroglyphics while maintaining the slick appearance of an eternal modernity. The author tells this story in a way that reflects this Art Deco attitude. It is hard to explain why, but his sentences are short, sharp, simple, and direct. The plot flows smoothly like steely water, turning sharp corners, rounding bends, and moving in and out of layered facades. And those surfaces are turning grimy from all the exhaust and smog coming from heavy traffic. All of this is like a chrome plated urban environment, a setting for living, breathing human beings of flesh and blood. William Hjorstberg really captures a slice of New York City’s soul in both the style and substance of this novel.
Enough can’t be said about all the clever details in Falling Angel. It is also impossible to ignore that it is just plain fun to read. It will probably be worth reading again. But that all depends on how long the Devil lets me live. That shouldn’t be a big problem though since I’m certainly not an angel, falling or otherwise.
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