Line #45 Literature/AngelsOfMusic


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/angels_of_music.png]]
2	->''Towards the end of the seventies--that colourful, hectic decade of garish clothes, corrupt politics, personal excess and trivial music--three girls were sent to the Paris Opéra.''
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4	''Angels of Music'' is a 2016 novel by Creator/KimNewman. It transposes the premise of ''Series/CharliesAngels'' into a 19th-century MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, depicting a detective agency founded in the 1870s by a [[Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera secretive genius who lives beneath the Paris Opera House]], with his protegée Christine as one of the founding agents alongside [[{{Literature/Trilby}} Trilby O'Ferrall]] and [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Irene Adler]].
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6	The novel is divided into five "Acts", each depicting an adventure from a different period of the Opera Ghost Agency's operation and featuring a different line-up of Angels. (Later Angels include [[{{Theatre/Pygmalion}} Elizabeth Eynsford Hill]], [[{{Film/Gigi}} Gilberte Lachaille]], [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Sophy Kratides]], [[Manga/LadySnowblood a vengeful Japanese lady named Yuki]], and Newman's own [[Literature/DiogenesClub Kate Reed]], among others of more obscure origins.) There is also one shorter story, described as an "entr'acte" (the term for a piece of music written to be played in the intermission between acts of an opera).
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8	* Act I: The Marriage Club (1870s). A number of prominent men have been acting uncharacteristically after recently taking young and beautiful wives of obscure origins. What role is played by the socialite [[Literature/ArseneLupin Countess Cagliostro]], and the mysterious works of [[Literature/TheSandman1816 Monsieur Coppélius and Signor Spallanzani]]?
9	* Act II: Les Vampires de Paris (1880s). A diplomat has been murdered, and his body drained of blood. Popular opinion is that a vampire did it, possibly the mysterious caped figure lately seen haunting the rooftops of the city.
10	* Entr'acte: The Case of Mrs Norton. A former Angel returns to the Agency, this time as a client seeking assistance with a difficulty involving her husband.
11	* Act III: Guignol (1890s). There has been a rash of disappearances in a neighborhood where a new theatre has opened, a theatre that specialises in graphic and gory depictions of murder and torture. It's all just a show... isn't it?
12	* Act IV: The Mark of Kane (1900s). The Agency's commission, should they choose to accept it, is to take down a tycoon from a barbaric nation who plans to set off a war between the superpowers in order to bolster his own country and his own business interests.
13	* Act V: Deluge (1910). As a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910_Great_Flood_of_Paris Great Flood]] throws Paris into disarray, an old enemy strikes directly at the Agency. One of the Angels is not who she seems, one of the Angels is not to be trusted. Is this the last stand of the Phantom of the Opera and the Angels of Music?
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15	''Angels of Music'' features the same version of Irene Adler as Newman's earlier ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheDurbervilles'', and has guest appearances by several characters from the Literature/DiogenesClub series; Newman has confirmed that all three are intended to "loosely" share the same setting.
16	----
17	!!Contains examples of:
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19	* AbominableAuditorium: The Grand Guignol is a dark theatre in Paris which showcases bloody shows and satire for the audience; though initially suspected of foul play, it's really just a deeply controversial horror show that's otherwise perfectly above board... or at least it is during work hours. Unknown to all, the theatre has been taken over by the villainous Red Circle who use it to stage late-night snuff performances for their sick amusement while Guignol himself is ForcedToWatch. [[spoiler: Ironically, it ends up being brought down with direct assistance from the Phantom of the Opera himself.]]
20	* AdaptationalBadass: Sort of a necessity, since the stories are all action based, while many of the works the original characters came from were not. For certain characters (like Gigi and Eliza) it's explained as tutelage from the Persian and lessons from Erik.
21	* AdaptationalVillainy: To an extent. None of the villains are exactly nice people in the original works, but some of them are much worse here. Most clearly for the murderer in "Les Vampires de Paris", whose penchant for elaborate revenge never went beyond embarrassing but basically harmless pranking in the original work.
22	* AllPartOfTheShow: Invoked in "Guignol"; during a public performance to drum up publicity for the Théâtre des Horreurs, the performers abduct one of the Angels in a way that leaves the crowd believing it's part of the act.
23	* BackForTheFinale: "Deluge" features several former Angels returning to help the current Angels defeat a conspiracy that turns out to be led by most of the surviving bad guys from the earlier Acts.
24	* BatmanParody: "Les Vampires de Paris" reinvents Dr Falke from ''Theatre/DieFledermaus'' as a vengeful crusader in a bat costume, with a variety of bat-shaped weapons and gadgets.
25	* BelievingTheirOwnLies: In the interlude, Irene Adler is convinced her husband has some kind of dark secret. It's revealed that [[spoiler: she convinced herself of this "fact" to justify leaving him because she can't bear living an ordinary married life]].
26	* CanonWelding: The depiction of Irene Adler and Kate Reed suggests that the book is set in the same universe as Newman's ''Literature/DiogenesClub'' and ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheDurbervilles'' stories. In fact, Sebastian Moran is seen at the French villa in "The Mark of Kane", where he's vacationing at the end of the latter.
27	* ChainedToARailway: In "The Mark of Kane", the original {{Dastardly Whiplash}}es, Raymond Owen/Mr Koerner (from ''Film/ThePerilsOfPauline'') and Perry Bennett/the Clutching Hand (from ''Film/TheExploitsOfElaine''), have an off-page discussion about how this never works out for them.
28	* ChekhovsGun: Played with in "Guignol", with an actual gun. Several pages are spent on Kate Reed acquiring a revolver to make up for her lack of martial arts skills compared to the other Angels; almost immediately, [[spoiler:she is abducted by the villains, losing her newly-obtained gun in the process. Her skill with firearms does play a role in the denouement, but she needs to steal one of the bad guys' guns first; her own gun is never seen again]].
29	* DarkerAndEdgier: Compared to some of the works that characters are drawn from, in particular the use of characters from light operettas like ''Theatre/DieFledermaus'' and ''Theatre/TheMerryWidow'' (not to mention ''[[WesternAnimation/LongHairedHare Giovanni Jones]]!'') in "Les Vampires de Paris".
30	* DeadlyPrank: In "Les Vampires de Paris", [[spoiler:a group of students prank one of their friends by tricking him into thinking that his girlfriend is a vampire and has killed them all. To their horror, he reacts swiftly and decisively by finding a sharp piece of wood and staking her before any of them have a chance to stop him. He subsequently murders each of them in revenge]].
31	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: "The Marriage Club" opens "towards the end of the seventies"--by which it means the ''18''70s, not TheSeventies, but the scene-setting paragraph highlights the similarities between the two decades. The opening of "Les Vampires de Paris" does the same with TheEighties.
32	* {{Eagleland}}:
33	** Irene Adler's American nationality is very low key in the Sherlock Holmes story she originally appears in; here she has a pronounced Noo Joisey accent (when she doesn't try to hide it), learned to shoot in a Wild West show, and wears a cowgirl costume to a masquerade ball.
34	** Charles Foster Kane, decidedly Boorish. He's a FatBastard war profiteer tycoon who buys up European towns and turns them into tacky resorts with adjacent fast food restaurants (including Burgher Kane).
35	* EloquentInMyNativeTongue: Madame van Helsing is a comical figure being, with her strangeness of syntax (similar to her husband) when French she is speaking and her pedantic insistence that not existing are vampires. When they switch to German, which is closer to her native Dutch, she gets her point across much better.
36	* EqualOpportunityOffender: It's noted of a performance at the Théâtre des Horreurs that "the programme seemed calculated to offend ''everyone'' – Catholics (especially Jesuits), Protestants (especially Freemasons), Jews (no surprises there), atheists and freethinkers, conservatives, moderates, radicals..."
37	* {{Expy}}: Erik to Charlie and the Persian for John Bosley of ''Series/CharliesAngels''.
38	* FixingTheGame: In "The Mark of Kane", Kane has set up a casino where all of the games are rigged. He plans to use it to secretly distribute funds to his LegionOfDoom to allow them to put in motion their various schemes that will tip Europe into war. The Persian and the Angels re-fix the games so that all of the cash flows back to the casino. Needless to say, this does not go down well with the collected fanatics, zealots and madmen, who now think that Kane is trying to humiliate them and rip them off, and start extracting suitable vengeance.
39	* GarageBand: a period-appropriate variant in ''Le Gang des Schubert'', a band of unruly opera-wannabes consisting of [[WesternAnimation/LongHairedHare Giovanni Jones]], [[Theatre/DieFledermaus Dr. Falke]], and Anatole Garron (from the 1941 ''Phantom of the Opera'' film). Fittingly, they disbanded after a falling out over a girl. [[spoiler:That is, a girl they killed who may or may not have been a vampire]].
40	* ItWillNeverCatchOn:
41	** When Kate Reed visits the Opera House's armoury, she's offered pearl-handed revolvers that look like they could have belonged to Anne Oakley, and reflects that Oakley's life would be an absurd subject for [[Theatre/AnnieGetYourGun musical theatre]].
42	** [[Literature/TheBigSleep General Sternwood]] derides Britain's plans for a hypothetical war with France, because the Normandy beaches would be a terrible place to stage a counter-invasion.
43	** In the final chapter there's a throwaway gag about Kate hearing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and predicting it will sink without a trace.
44	* JediMindTrick: Used to get past a checkpoint in "Deluge". "These are not the Angels you are looking for."
45	* KillerOutfit: Rollo wears a BadassLongcoat lined with dozens of knives so he always has a blade to hand. He dies when Erik grabs the coat and pulls it tight around him; causing him to be stabbed by dozens of his own knives.
46	* KnifeThrowingAct: In "Guignol", Rollo is a knife-thrower with ''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' who is dismissed by Guignol for collaborating a little too willingly with ''Le Theatre Des Horreurs'' when they take over the theatre. He returns in "Deluge", alongside several other of the Angels' old enemies; now a fully-fledged PsychoKnifeNut looking to flense the Angels in revenge for his earlier humiliation
47	* LegacyCharacter: The Phantom is suspected by some, to explain his longevity, of actually being a succession of people behind the mask. [[spoiler:This is not true--until the end of "Deluge", when one of the Angels steps into the role after the Phantom is apparently killed]].
48	* LegionOfDoom: Charles Foster Kane assembles one in Act IV, though one of the Angels observes it's full of notable second-raters (compared to the Legion that normally shows up in Newman's work, which boasts Moriarty and Fu Manchu); members include Raymond Owen and Perry Bennett (some of the earliest villains to tie a damsel to a railway), Mr. Potter from ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'', Senator Paine from ''Film/MrSmithGoesToWashington'', the Face from ''Series/AdamAdamantLives'', Natasha di Murska from George Griffith's ''The Angels of the Revolution'' and General Sternwood from ''Film/TheBigSleep''.
49	* LiteralMetaphor: In Act V, Irene Adler calls Olympia "a real doll", and Kate Reed chides her for using Americanisms. Irene replies she wasn't. [[Literature/TheSandman1816 Olympia really is literally a life-size doll animated by an internal mechanism]].
50	* LosingYourHead: In the stage show at the Théâtre des Horreurs, a representation of Saint Denis is decapitated and his headless body continues to blunder around, while his bodiless head preaches against immorality until another character kicks it off stage like a football.
51	* MadeOfPlasticine: Discussed in Act III. Yuki says that she can tell the decapitations in the Théâtre des Horreurs stage show are fake because the heads come off too easily: "To cut off a head... it is not so easy as they make out. Even with a sharp sword."
52	* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: The Phantom, the Persian, and Christine Daaé from ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' join forces with the heroines of ''Literature/{{Trilby}}'' and ''[[Literature/SherlockHolmes A Scandal in Bohemia]]''. All the later Angels are also borrowed from various works of fiction, as are most of their antagonists and a fair percentage of the side characters.
53	* MasterOfDisguise:
54	** La Marmoset, who first appeared in the pulp novel ''La Marmoset, the Detective Queen'' by Albert W. Aiken, has an exceptional talent with disguises.
55	** Elizabeth Eynsford Hill (formerly [[{{Theatre/Pygmalion}} Eliza Doolittle]]) is depicted as an expert in impersonation, having developed the skill set from the starting point of a talent for vocal mimicry.
56	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The vampiric murders in "Les Vampires de Paris" turn out to have a mundane explanation, but several of the supporting characters were real vampires in the stories they're drawn from, and each gets at least one hint that they're vampires in this story as well. [[spoiler:This also applies to the young woman the murderer is avenging, who was killed after being mistaken for a vampire; for the reader familiar with ''Literature/{{Carmilla}}'', there are hints that she really was a vampire -- and that she's not really dead]].
57	* MonsterClown: Guignol, the mascot of the Théâtre des Horreurs, "the capering mountebank [with] his padded paunch, his camel's hump, his gross red nose, his too-wide grin, his terrible teeth, his rouged cheeks, his white gloves with long sharp nails bursting the fingertip seams, his red-and-white striped tights, his jerkin embroidered with skulls and snakes and bats, his shock of white hair, his curly-toed boots, his quick mind, his cruel quips, his shrill songs..." [[spoiler:It turns out that he's less monstrous than many at the Théâtre who look more normal, and is secretly working to bring down the people who made the Théâtre -- and him -- what they are.]]
58	* NeckLift: In "Deluge", Rollo is deciding which of the Angels to execute first when he grabs Aralune by the throat and holds her off the roof the opera house one-handed. It looks like he is preparing to drop her, but instead starts strangling her.
59	* NeverBeHurtAgain: A downplayed example. Irene Adler (apparently referring to dealings with Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty) is determined to never be used by another "mastermind" again, which is the reason she leaves the agency.
60	* NeverFoundTheBody: Several cases, in accordance with tradition, end with the villain's body not being found. Specifically, [[spoiler:Falke at the end of "Les Vampires de Paris", making it possible to reappear as one of the vengeful villains in "Deluge"; and the denouement of "Deluge" features the Phantom and his nemesis plunging to an ambiguous watery doom]].
61	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The Théâtre des Horreurs in "Guignol" is based on the historical Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, with the grotesqueness turned up even further than in real life.
62	* PropheticFallacy: In "Deluge", Unorna receives a warning in a vision, the true meaning of which is not apparent until it's too late to be useful. [[spoiler:The warning -- "One of us is not to be trusted. One of us is not who she seems." -- is actually two separate warnings. The Angel who is not who she seems is entirely trustworthy, while the traitor Angel is untrustworthy for reasons that have always been apparent]].
63	* PsychoKnifeNut: Rollo is the knife-thrower in ''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' in "Guignol" who is dismissed for collaborating a little too willingly with the horrors. He returns in "Deluge" equipped with dozens of blades and looking to extract vengeance on the Angels by skinning them.
64	* PublicDomainCanonWelding: The Phantom, the Persian, and Christine Daaé from ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' join forces with the heroines of ''Literature/{{Trilby}}'' and ''[[Literature/SherlockHolmes A Scandal in Bohemia]]''. All the later Angels are also borrowed from various works of fiction, as are most of their antagonists and a fair percentage of the side characters.
65	* SequelNonEntity: Act I, which was originally written and published as a stand-alone story, ends with one of the Angels retiring and an unexpected person being recruited to take her place. When he chose to write more Angels stories, Newman decided the new character didn't work well as an Angel, so Act II has a brief mention that she didn't last long and then she's not mentioned again until everyone comes BackForTheFinale.
66	* ShoutOut:
67	** The whole set-up is borrowed from ''Series/CharliesAngels'', while "The Mark of Kane" also takes cues from ''Series/MissionImpossible''.
68	** In addition to the many borrowed characters who are central to the plot, even ones who get a line or two at the most of description are often lifted from other works. Chapter one features [[Film/CitizenKane C.F. Kane]]'s mentor, Baron Maupertius (a mentioned but not seen character in [[Literature/SherlockHolmes "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"]], described as having 'colossal schemes', here described as a 'colossus') and Basil Hallward (who painted Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray), mentioned by first name and explicitly identified as a homosexual. There are many, many more (including brief reference to Sibyl Vane, also from ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'').
69	* TheStinger: The book's final chapter is followed by the author's afterword and acknowledgments, an author bio, a page plugging other books from the same publisher, and ''then'' a brief epilogue with a SequelHook.
70	* SupervillainLair: The Persian notes that there are not many contractors around to build these. The Phantom of the Opera is on good terms with enough of them that he can get the original blueprints of the Villain of the Week's lair just by asking nicely (what, you thought he built his underground home himself?)
71	* SwordCane: Yuki is always described as carrying her parasol, which is eventually revealed to have sword concealed in it. (This comes as a surprise to no one who has seen ''Film/LadySnowblood''.)
72	* TheatrePhantom: Erik, the original Phantom of the Opera, is now seemingly immortal and still dwelling beneath the Paris Opera House. Although he now largely delegates things to his [[AmazonBrigade Angels of Music]], the climax shows that he can still haunt a theatre with the best of them and instill terror into his enemies.
73	* ThisPageWillSelfDestruct: In "The Mark of Kane", as part of the ''Series/MissionImpossible'' shout-out, the Opera Ghost Agency receives a secret message on a self-destructing phonograph.
74	* ToneShift: Each chapter has a different tone to match the decade it's set in (or the century-later equivalent); Act I is decidedly cheesy while Act III is horrifically gory.
75	* TooGoodToBeTrue: In "The Case of Mrs Norton", Irene Norton née Adler hires the Angels to investigate her husband Godfrey, having become convinced that someone as seemingly upright and noble as him must be hiding some kind of dark secret.
76	* WarForFunAndProfit: Charles Foster Kane made a fortune selling newspaper headlines about the Spanish-American war, so he plots to start a sequel of sorts: a crisis involving the Suez Canal.
77	* WhipOfDominance: One of [[IntrepidReporter Kate Reed's]] bizarre findings in her investigation of the Montmartre neighborhood is some [[NaughtyNuns attractive nuns wielding riding crops]] while giving their sermons, while also wearing [[StockingFiller fishnets]] under their habits.

Context Literature / AngelsOfMusic