Detective Inspector Angelis Crime Thriller Series by Matthew J Evans. There’s more to this world than our eyes can perceive. Available on Amazon.
The character of Detective Inspector David Angelis heads a Major Crimes team in Chichester, West Sussex, based in a fictional investigations centre next to the old Custody Centre and Chichester Police Station on Kingsham Road.
DI Angelis is no ordinary detective. In December 2019, Angelis was a Detective Sergeant working out of Brighton station. He—and another officer—went to make an arrest after a domestic incident, but he wasn’t expecting the devastating events that were about to unfold—a savage attack that critically injured him.
Angelis awoke from a coma to discover that he was not the same man he was before. He was initially blind and paralysed but eventually learned to walk again, and his vision returned. But everything he saw around him then was different. He became aware he could see the memories of others and influence agitated minds. Angelis started to see a world of temporal layers and ghost-like creatures he struggled to explain, as well as an even greater mystery of a new friend: the mystical African Woman.
Angelis takes two years to recover, improving slowly and quietly, trying to come to terms with the bizarre gifts he has been given. He takes a backroom job, eventually studying and passing his inspector’s exams. At last, he is ready to hit frontline policing again, but his first case is very close to home.
Matthew J Evans creates gripping police procedural crime thrillers set in Chichester, West Sussex. He has used his years of police experience to write compelling police procedural storylines with a supernatural twist.
Ancient yews surround me, and it’s silent here, like the hushed reverence of a cathedral. I see the ghosts of a thousand journeys made through these trees, criss-crossing the ancient pathways, their impressions etched into this other-worldly forest.
I walk further along a narrow pathway that leads me to the oldest yew of them all. He’s a wrinkled man with a hollowed trunk as his gaping mouth and his red, flaking beard of snaking roots. A little beyond, behind the furthest extent of his beard, a robin alights on a bramble cane. She pauses a moment so I can see her, then she flits to an oak sapling further away. As I follow her, a shaft of sunlight highlights a track hidden beneath a layer of tangled brambles. I continue until I come to another space tucked away, with only the robin for company and the sound of my heartbeat.
Extract from Chasing Shadows – a scene in Kingley Vale, Chichester.