In The Rebel Angels, morality and hilarity contribute in about equal parts to a story of theft and murder set in the College of St. John and the Holy Ghost (Spook, to its familiars) on the campus of a large Canadian university. Careful readers of Davies will not be surprised by the simplicity of the story-line, the adept management of narrative structure, the lively characterisation, the re-emergence of familiar themes, the acerbic commentary on academic and other forms of life, and the flurry of esoteric information. (p. 578)

The narrative takes the form of two linked first-person accounts, one by Simon Darcourt and one by Maria Theotoky, alternating through the novel…. The distinction between them is so neat as to appear almost over-contrived, yet is is thematically appropriate as well as structurally useful, for each of them represents a psychic element of the other which must be reckoned with. Darcourt [an Anglican priest] must come to terms with his physical self, particularly in the form of erotic love and a tendency to put on weight. Maria, whom he loves, must come to terms with her Gypsy inheritance while living in a gadje (non-Gypsy) society, represented at its best by Darcourt.

Although Darcourt is an interesting and well-realized character, it is Maria who really occupies the center of the novel, for she is one of Davies' most engaging characters, and certainly his most interesting female character. The female characters of a male writer often attract, not always justifiably, both amusement and abuse from feminist readers. Maria should escape both, for Davies in presenting her shows himself to be informed on the interests and issues of feminism, although not necessarily in agreement with all of it. Maria holds aloof from the women's movement, therefore, and does not have much use for liberation, at least not in the standard definition of the term. But in spite of her unrequited affection for Hollier, a marriage ceremony in which she agrees to obey her husband, and her adoption of two senior males (Darcourt and Hollier) as mentors, Maria manages to be completely herself. (pp. 578-79)

In his presentation of Maria as the development of a feminine personality, Davies is of course re-engaging an earlier theme, in this case the theme of A Mixture of Frailties. Other earlier themes and ideas also emerge, notably Jungian psychological theory. If this is not immediately apparent, it is because Davies has moved beyond the now familiar theory of the archetypes, to the more esoteric involvement with the relationship between psychology and alchemy which occupied Jung for many years. In the person of Ozias Froats, the biologist with his shining stainless-steel laboratories and specially designed "buckets" for human excrement, conscientiously deploying statistical methods and microphotographic techniques to the categorization of fecal samples in search of a clue to the temperaments associated with certain categories of sample. Davies explicitly recreates the mediaeval alchemist in modern guise, and through him examines the issue, common to both the alchemist and the modern biologist, of the relationship between soma and psyche. But the mediaeval alchemists, although the hazards of their lives were numerous and varied, did not have to contend with crusading MLAs calling for their funding to be withdrawn ("Get the Shit Out of Our Varsity") as Froats does. Confronting Froats with this particular hazard is just one of the ways in which Davies displays his talent for impeccably accurate satiric observation on academic life. (pp. 579-80)

In addition to some rich exhibitions of humour, Davies in each of his novels provides his readers with a display of esoteric knowledge. In The Rebel Angels, he offers two. The first is a display of Gypsy life, history, and lore, complete with a sinister Tarot reading and a curse that misfires. But, however esoteric it may seem, this is Maria's inheritance, an inheritance which she must learn to reconcile with the academic world of scholarship into which she has worked her way. Consequently, it forms an important part of the novel's thematic structure. This importance is shared by the novel's other display of esoteric knowledge: the exposition of W. H. Sheldon's constitutional theory of personality, which is at the back of Froats' research, and through which Davies continues to pursue his search for the understanding of human nature. Neither of them is present merely to allow Davies to show off.

The Rebel Angels does not mark a radical change in Davies' development as a writer. Morality and hilarity are still directed to understanding human nature as this presents itself to him. There is some shift in the thrust of his exploration, in that for the first time he seems to be taking an interest in the effects of ethnic and physical factors on human personality. Since Davies seems to work in threes (as witnessed by the Salterton trilogy and the Deptford trilogy), and since it is rumoured that another novel related to The Rebel Angels is already on the way, perhaps we should be looking forward to the Spook trilogy. Certainly, The Rebel Angels, opening with one death, ending with two more, and packing between them a study of human nature at once hilarious and deeply serious, enjoyable and thought-provoking, is an enticing beginning. (p. 580)