Thomas E. Kennedy is nothing if not a risk-taker. "In the Company of Angels" (Bloomsbury, 276 pages, $25) -- in its debut American edition -- juxtaposes sex and violence in a way that could easily be morally repugnant, or, easier still, obvious. In Copenhagen, Bernardo Greene (called Nardo), poetry lover/torture victim, is slowly recovering from unimaginable horrors perpetrated on his body and soul by the thugs of the U.S.-installed Pinochet regime. During his therapy sessions, he mentions he's seen a woman who reminds him of an angel.

The second story line involves this angel, a voluptuous, kind-hearted woman named Michela Ibsen, and her callow young lover, Voss. Kennedy takes us on a tour of their erotic life, their stormy affair. This is hard to swallow after torture has just been well and clearly described.

We know that Nardo and Michela must meet and must either love or fail to love each other. The question is whether Kennedy, who clearly cares, can pull this story off without sentimentality or obscenely misplaced titillation. The answer is yes, and the book is a gripping read that won't leave your psyche needing a shower.

This is one of four novels that Kennedy has set in Copenhagen, his home for the past 20 years. Kennedy is an American living abroad, but I wouldn't call him an ex-pat. Copenhagen, the city, is clearly his country. He describes its Tivoli gardens, its lakes, its apartments drab and fancy with tenderness and panache. His characters are likewise vivid. Michela may be a love object, but she is also, literally, well-rounded. She moves through the story with the instinctive integrity of the angelic, but she's not above some verbal fencing, and eating and drinking with abandon. She's been a victim of domestic violence, and is in danger of "putting herself in the path" of another man's violence with her obsessive young lover.

Is she in some sense, she wonders, asking for it? This is a tricky thought to have a character think in a novel focused on political torture. Nardo Greene has no such questions. He was beaten and humiliated, his family killed, because he taught the wrong poem in a high school class.

Kennedy's book is a brave one. It does become sentimental at times, but every moment that stretches credulity is balanced by a recognizably human scene. When Nardo and Michela fall to the floor in tearful ecstasy at the power of love, Kennedy follows up with a scene of her angry, cancer-ridden father's proud and self-deluded last rantings. This book strikes many notes, one or two of them false, but most of them ringing. "In the Company of Angels" leaves an echo.

Emily Carter is the author of "Glory Goes and Gets Some."