The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, death by suicide, and emotional abuse. 

In Janice Hallett’s novel, the Alperton Angels is not a cult but rather a front for a group of criminals. The modus operandi of the group’s leader, Gabriel Angelis, was to deceive vulnerable teenagers into participating in criminal activity. Only Holly and Jonah believed in the narrative that Gabriel constructed. Nevertheless, Gabriel illustrates the characteristics and techniques of cult leaders. Furthermore, Don Makepeace exploited Gabriel’s persona as a cult leader to disguise the true means of the “angels’” deaths. Presenting their assassinations as mass death by suicide played into the public’s association of cults with horrific scenes of self-destruction. The novel underlines this connection, citing real-life events such as Jonestown (1978), in which over 900 members of the Peoples Temple (including children) died by drinking cyanide-laced punch, and Heaven’s Gate (1997), where 39 people died in a ritual mass death by suicide, believing that they would ascend in an alien spacecraft to a higher plane of being.

The author’s depiction of the Alperton Angels typifies the dynamics of cults that rely on coercive control to manipulate, dominate, and retain their members.