Pros Novel Read-Along - Painted Angels by Angelfish - Chapter One

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yeay, it's time for our weekly chat about the Pros Novel Read-Along chapter! We're on:

Painted Angels by Angelfish.
Cover art by firlefanzine

Chapter One

Chapter One opens with a sharp, snappy statement: William Bodie - too tough for the SAS. This chapter is mostly from Bodie's point of view (with interludes from Cowley's pov, from Doyle's and even from Murphy's). He's involved in both being recruited to CI5 and training recruits in CI5, and we meet him tutoring them with guns on a range, but the emphasis in the chapter is on why he's really there. Despite the fiction of being seconded to CI5 from the SAS, he has in fact been thrown out - his old boss, Robert Marsh, won't take him back if he can't make it in CI5, although he's convinced Cowley to take him on rather than simply discharging him.

Bodie, it turns out, killed one too many people who shouldn't have had to die while he was in the SAS, and Marsh is finding it hard to justify things any more. The most recent was a man who had already surrendered - others have included suspects in holding cells.

The trouble is, Cowley finds, Bodie has brought his old ways to CI5 as well - he also has a suspect dead in a holding cell after Bodie has finished interrogating him. Cowley got the information he wanted, so he doesn't simply get rid of Bodie either, but Bodie's got one last chance - and a punishment. He's being demoted to simply another recruit, no more "semi-tutorial role", and he will have to accept being partnered with one of the other recruits at the end of the training.

Bodie of course, is not happy - he doesn't think much of the recruits, and certainly not DS Doyle, who started out in art school, moved onto the Met and then got his partner shot, so that he worked alone after that, and worked hard at moving up through the ranks (so now we know what happened to Doyle in between the Prologue and turning up in CI5!) "Bodie knows the type. Activated by perceived injustice, on a solo mission to set the world to rights." He has to concede that Doyle's a decent shot, though, and as Bodie's "a good teacher" he sees that although he's an excellent shot, Doyle's not used to semiautomatic weapons, and needs to adjust his stance to avoid the worst of the recoil. He steps up behind him, and reaches around...

...and is promptly blocked from doing so, Doyle using a combat move that Bodie's never seen before. He "doesn't like being crept up on". Bodie asks permission to touch him this time, and with a slight correction Doyle is able to avoid the recoil as well as shoot perfectly. Doyle, meanwhile, is finding that something he's done many times before, as both trainee and trainer, is having a strange effect on him this time - he's aware of "the firm pectorals, whisper of six-pack down his spine". He manages to control it though, including when Bodie pushes at him, about whether he's ever had to shoot people as well as targets (five, but none killed) and whether his broken cheekbone bothers him. In fact, Doyle gets in the last word, and it's Bodie who's left feeling thrown.

Finally, we see Bodie confronting Murphy, and it turns out that they were mates and lovers in the SAS, and joined CI5 together - "when they decided to try for Cowley's outfit" (?But we've been told Bodie was sent off on secondment, so ?). Murphy is rejoining his old mountain rescue squad, and he suggests that Bodie moves with him - but Bodie won't, as he knew he wouldn't, and Murphy confesses that one of the reasons he's going is that Bodie's violence has got too much for him as well. Bodie tries to convince him with one last blow job, and blocks his way out of the room, falling to his knees - but Murphy is stronger-willed than that, and gently deflects him. Things are over between them, Bodie has become "cruel. Unmanageable".

Murphy leaves Bodie on his knees in the empty squad room, "steps around him and out".

And that's where we're left at the end of Chapter One! A quick reminder - no spoilers for later chapters in the novel please, if you've read ahead. Otherwise - have at it in the comments! *g*

Comments

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I really don't like when a writer pairs up everyone on a show, as if all of CI5, or Starfleet, or whatever, is manned (or womanned,) by mostly gay people

I agree.

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Me too!