An Edgar Award–nominated classic, Falling Angel follows the hunt for a vanished singer that leads a detective into the depths of the occult. This hard-boiled detective novel was adapted for the screen as Angel Heart, starring Robert De Niro, in 1987.

• Award-winning author: Falling Angel was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel in 1978. Hjortsberg has also won two Playboy Editorial Awards, for which he beat out Graham Greene and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.
• Backlist interest: Hjortsberg’s most recent work is Jubilee Hitchhiker (2012), a biography of Richard Brautigan, American writer and voice of 1960s counterculture. This publication has received a lot of press in recent months, causing a resurgence of interest in Hjortsberg’s earlier work.  

Edgar Award Finalist: The hunt for a vanished singer leads a detective into the depths of the occult in this “terrific” novel (Stephen King).

Big-band frontman Johnny Favorite was singing for the troops when a Luftwaffe fighter squadron strafed the bandstand, killing the crowd and leaving the singer near death. The army returned him to a private hospital in upstate New York, leaving him to live out his days as a vegetable while the world forgot him. But Louis Cyphre never forgets.

Cyphre had a contract with the singer, stipulating payment upon Johnny’s death—payment that will be denied as long as Johnny clings to life. When Cyphre hires private investigator Harry Angel to find Johnny at the hospital, Angel learns that the singer has disappeared. It is no ordinary missing-person’s case. Everyone he questions dies soon after, as Angel’s investigation ensnares him in a bizarre tangle of black magic, carnival freaks, and grisly voodoo. When the sinister Louis Cyphre begins appearing in Angel’s dreams, the detective fears for his life, his sanity, and his soul.

Falling Angel was the basis for the Alan Parker film Angel Heart, starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet.