Demon strike by Andrew Newbound

Scholastic, 2010. ISBN 978 1 906427 17 7
(Age 10+) Warmly recommended. A wonderful fantasy thriller, Demon strike will garner fans of all ages who want to read a fantasy but mixed with humour and fun. Wortley Flint and his ghost busting partner, Alannah Malarra go to a house where some strange ghoulish behaviour has been detected. Their ghost busting business is doing well, so they a re appalled when another level of ghost busters, people from ANGEL arrive, ready to take them on.
Fhli, the ANGEL, realises that she has been sent to dispose of these two young hunters, and sees that they are not the problem, despite them showing up on Evan City's radar. So they join forces to find out just what malevolence there is in the old house. But Fhli is not supposed to join forces with humans or 'fleshies' and is called back to explain herself to the mayor.
This laugh out loud fantasy has cleverly worked the angel motif into a scrum of fantastic creatures. ANGEL stands for Attack-ready Network of Global Evanescent Law-enforcers, the elite army of Evan City, the Higher Dimension that provides protectors for all. Flhi has been given her wings and is sent to earth on what she sees as a do or die mission, but she survives. Newbound uses a bunch of wonderful phrases, straight from American war movies ('get your skinny butt out of there', 'an angel is down' and so on), while the names of the characters laughingly portray some of their characteristics. Kids will laugh out loud as I did along with Alannah and Wortley, Flhi and her troopers and with Alannah finding out where her parents are must mean another story in the pipeline.
Fran Knight