The Angel Maker
SynopsisPlot
The village of Wolfheim is a quiet little place until the geneticist Dr. Victor Hoppe returns after an absence of nearly twenty years. The doctor brings with him his infant children-three identical boys all sharing a disturbing disfigurement. He keeps them hidden away until Charlotte, the woman who is hired to care for them, begins to suspect that the triplets-and the good doctor- aren't quite what they seem. As the villagers become increasingly suspicious, the story of Dr. Hoppe's past begins to unfold, and the shocking secrets that he has been keeping are revealed.
Story
About this book
The Angel Maker follows Dr. Victor Hoppe, a geneticist who returns to the small Belgian village of Wolfheim after nearly twenty years away. He arrives with three infant triplets, identical boys who share the same cleft lip he was born with. The children are kept out of sight, and the villagers watch with a mix of curiosity and unease. Over time, Hoppe wins some trust through apparent medical successes and a sympathetic account of his dead wife, but suspicion never fully fades.
As a child, Hoppe was placed in a convent-run institution where his autism and cleft lip led the nuns to dismiss him as incapable. That early experience of religious rigidity pushed him toward science, and he built a career in genetics driven by a desire to correct what he saw as nature's errors. His ambitions eventually brought professional ruin. The novel traces the consequences of that ambition through both his past and his present life in Wolfheim.
Charlotte, an ex-schoolmistress hired to care for the boys, gradually notices details that do not add up. Her growing doubts about the doctor and the triplets form the central tension of the story, set against the village's own slow shift from acceptance back toward suspicion.
