Andrew Taylor - Page 1
Paperback - Flamingo (2004) |
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First British Edition Flamingo (2003) |
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The American Boy
Winner of the CWA Historical Dagger for Fiction 2003
England 1819. Two enigmatic Americans arrive in London and soon after a bank collapses. A man is found dead on a building site; another goes missing in the teeming stews of Seven Dials. A deathbed vigil ends in an act of theft and a beautiful heiress flirts with her inferiors. A strange destiny connects each of these events to the American boy Edgar Allan Poe, brought to England by his foster father and sent to the leafy village of Stoke Newington to be educated.
Soon the intrigue enmeshes a poor schoolmaster, Thomas Shield, who struggles to understand what is happening before it destroys him and those he loves. But the truth, like the youthful Poe himself, has its origins in the new world as well as the old.
The American Boy is a 21st-century novel with a 19th-century voice. It is both a multi-layered literary murder mystery and a love story, its setting ranging from the coal-scented fogs of late Regency London to the stark winter landscapes of rural Gloucestershire. And at its heart is the boy who does not really belong anywhere, an actor who never learns the significance of his part.
`Absolutely unputdownable. It has a very strong narrative with a mystery plot whose successive surprises are brilliantly handled. It is a superb evocation of the period and the author has real insight into the mores, language, and conventions of the age - which is extremely rare’
Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx
`A marvellous saga-length story, reconstructing time and place with gorgeous, storytelling ease, illuminating history and humanity. To use a word unknown at the time, terrific’
Frances Fyfield
‘Hugely entertaining. Its beguiling story and atmospheric evocation of Regency London and the winter landscapes of Gloucestershire cry out fo a wingback chair and a blazing fire’ Observer (Books of the Year)
‘A most artful and delightful book, that will both amuse and chill, and it will have you desperate to search out a quiet corner to continue your acquaintance with it.’ Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year)
'Deeply absorbing and beautifully written… he creates an atmosphere close to Sarah Waters' Fingersmith' Independent
Acclaim for Andrew Taylor
`Taylor is marvellous and devilishly clever’ Mail on Sunday
`Andrew Taylor is one of the most interesting, if not THE most interesting novelist writing on crime in England today’ Spectator
`Like Hitchcock, Taylor pitches extreme and gothic events within a hair’s breadth of normality Times Literary Supplement
| British Pbk Original - HarperCollins (2002) |
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Requiem For An Angel
The Secret History of a Murderer
Omnibus Edition Includes The Office of the Dead, winner of the 2001 CWA Ellis Peters Dagger for the Best Historical Crime Novel
`Nobody’s perfect,’ says a little girl in a walled garden.
Certainly not the child stolen from a shabby London street. Or the sexually frustrated suburban vicar. Or least of all, perhaps, the woman who runs out of good times and comes to perch like a cuckoo in the bosom of a perfect family.
Requiem for an Angel uncovers the secret history of a murderer, tracing the full damage and horror of an unforgiving killer over forty years. For the first time the three volumes of the Roth Trilogy can be read together as they were designed. A chilling account of one family’s self-destruction, the story strips away the layers of the past like an archaeological dig into the very nature of evil.
The Roth Trilogy comprises The Four Last Things, The Judgement of Strangers and The Office of the Dead
Praise for Andrew Taylor and the Roth Trilogy
‘This author knows precisely how to wield suspense’ Independent on Sunday
‘Taylor is a major thriller talent’ Time Out
‘As Andrew Taylor triumphantly proves . . . there is still room for excellence’ Irish Times
‘Taylor is marvellous and devilishly clever’ Frances Hegarty, Mail on Sunday
‘Like Hitchcock, Taylor pitches extreme and gothic events within a hair’s breadth of normality’ TLS
‘There’s no denying Mr Taylor’s talent . . . exciting, readable and thoroughly amoral’ Daily Telegraph
‘Skilful, elegant, powerfully atmospheric [trilogy] in which ancient evil shimmers like images trapped in a corridor of mirrors’ Philip Oakes, Literary Review
‘Andrew Taylor is a master of the corrosive passions that fester beneath conventional facades . . . A fascinating unravelling of the horrors that the past can visit on the present’ Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
‘A highly praised trilogy of novels whose ecclesiastical back ground adds to the intense nature of the suspense. They inform not only the heart but the brain since Taylor is a
writer blessed with great compassion as well as an unerring eye for historical detail. His flawed heroes and heroines and narrators are people you have met before in the street. Their dilemmas are murderously mundane, but the scale of their tragedies, devastating’ Frances Fyfield, Sunday Express
‘I find it hard to understand why [these novels] are not better known, more hyped, filmed by European film directors. As well as being unputdownable, they are most unusual in their structure, style and content . . . Each book is an example of a different sort of suspense novel. The Four Last Things is a modern story and concerns a serial killer. The Wests’ unimaginable doings in Gloucester are brought to mind in many subtle ways. The Judgement of Strangers is an Agatha Christie novel but with all the simplicity gone . . . as though a kaleidoscope of the separate elements has been given an extra twist so that the result is as dark, passionate and dramatic as an opera. The Office of the Dead is a Gothic novel . . . and it is the genteel, civilised manner of the telling that makes the story all the more appalling . . . I was bowled over by them’
Adele Geras, Books and Company
‘A trilogy which spans both history and geography . . . which will have the reader turning back to check the identities of Taylor’s ambiguous characters and relish his fine writing’ Gerald Kaufman, Scotsman
‘Finely crafted . . . Taylor has established a sound reputation for writing tense novels that perceptively penetrate the human psyche. His ingredients are doubt, guilt and moral ambiguity, intermingling with the more usual trappings of crime ‘detection’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘Each [book in the trilogy] illuminates the others, and the depth and amplitude of this study of crime and retribution in a world in which literature, religion, obsession and long-concealed secrets interact with human needs and relationships, cannot be appreciated until the last few pages of [. . .] the final volume . . . A major literary undertaking’ James Melville, Ham & High
‘It deals in the quietest, most civilized way with abominable suffering . . . a highly sinister piece of work’ Natasha Cooper, TLS
‘Complex, with lots of sinister implications . . . moves the traditional crime novel on to some deeper level of exploration’ Jane Jakeman, Independent
| Paperback - NEL (2002) |
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First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2001) |
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Death's Own Door
The Lydmouth Series
When a widower with a distinguished war record is found dead in his summerhouse with a bottle of whisky beside him, the verdict is suicide.
But Inspector Richard Thornhill and his lover, reporter Jill Francis - approaching the case from different angles - soon realise there’s far more to it than that.
The widower’s death touches many lives. The investigation leads to a moderately famous artist and his wife. To Thornhill’s former boss, now retired and loathing it. To a charwoman and an army officer. To a councillor with more pies than fingers to put in them. To a dilettante magazine proprietor and an unmarried mother who lost her virtue and her baby when Victoria was on the throne.
Worst of all, to Thornhill’s growing horror, the investigation leads to his wife, Edith, and to another death during a highly-charged summer before the war.
But a third death is yet to come.
Peopled with complex, fascinating characters, capturing perfectly the drab atmosphere and cloying morality of the 1950s, Death’s Own Door is the sixth intriguing mystery in Andrew Taylor’s highly-acclaimed Lydmouth series.
'Taylor is an excellent writer' The Times
'There's no denying Taylor's talent' Time Out
`Taylor is the master of small lives writ large and, in the phrase coined in this era of surly pubs and poor food, he has carved a classic detective story which is deceptively calm and cool, but really smashing' Frances Fyfield, The Express
'The most underrated crime writer in Britain today' Val McDermid
'An absorbing read' Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
'Taylor's Lydmouth series is turning the classical detective story into a complex picture of our own past' Independent
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First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2000) |
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| Paperback - NEL (2003) |
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Paperback
NEL (2002) |
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Where Roses Fade
See Review by
H.R.F.Keating
- 1996 Cartier Diamond Dagger winner & creator of Inspector Ghote
See Review by
Bernard Knight
- Author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series set in Medieval Devon
When Mattie Harris laughs into the soft darkness of a May night it is the last time her voice is heard. Soon the rain-swollen river sweeps her body back to Lydmouth. Mattie couldn't swim. Did she fall into the water? Could she have jumped?
Mattie was a waitress, a woman of little consequence. So why are some of Lydmouth's leading citizens so anxious to establish that the death was accidental? Then the rumours begin to circulate, and with them comes another death.
As fear tightens its hold on the town, Jill Francis and Inspector Richard Thornhill can no longer avoid each other and the bitter-sweet implications of their attraction. But there are more secrets here. The living have their mysteries, as well as the dead ...
‘What makes theses novels transcend the average mystery is the author’s uncanny ability to create another era so comprehensively that the reader is walking along the same pavements and driving the same cars’ Frances Fyfield, Independent
‘The people depicted here are real and believable and the drabness and genteel façade of fifties England is skilfully brought to life. Taylor is, as always, adept at showing the reality beneath the surface’ Sunday Telegraph
'The most underrated crime writer in Britain today' Val McDermid
| Paperback - HarperCollins (2000) |
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First British Edition HarperCollins (2000) |
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The Office of the Dead
It's 1958, and the party's over for Wendy Appleyard: she finds herself penniless, jobless and on the brink of divorce. So she runs to her Oldest friend, Janet Byfield, who seems to have everything Wendy lacks: a handsome husband, a lovely little daughter, Rosie, and a beautiful home in the Cathedral Close of Rosington. David Byfield is on the verge of promotion, and Janet is the perfect wife for an ambitious young clergyman.
But perfection has always been dangerous, and gradually the idyll sours. Old sins come to haunt the present and breed new sins in their place. The shadow of death seeps through the Close, and with it comes a double mystery stretching back to turn-of-the-century Rosington, to a doomed poet-priest opium addict called Francis Youlgreave.
Only Wendy, the outsider looking in, glimpses the truth. But can she grasp its dark and twisted logic in time to prevent the coming tragedy?
The Office of the Dead is a chilling novel of crime and retribution, and is the third volume of Andrew Taylor's stunning and acclaimed Roth Trilogy.
'A highly sinister piece of work' Natasha Cooper, TLS
'With all due deference to its heavenly virtues, this is a hellishly good novel' Frances Fyfield, Sunday Express
About The Author
Andrew Taylor has been a full-time writer since 1981. He has written over twenty books, mainly crime novels and thrillers. They include the series featuring William Dougal, a detective who occasionally commits murders as well as solves them; an espionage trilogy whose chronology stretches from the 1930s to the 1980s; psychological thrillers; and books for younger readers.
CAROLINE MINUSCULE won the John Creasey Memorial Award from the Crime Writers' Association and an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America. OUR FATHERS' LIES was shortlisted for the CWA's Gold Dagger. The teenage thriller SNAPSHOT was shortlisted for the NatWest Children's Book of the Year Award.
Public Lending Right estimates put his British public library readership in the top one per cent. When CAROLINE MINUSCULE was serialised on BBC Radio 4 it reached a peak audience of up to four million.
He was educated at the universities of Cambridge and London. He has worked as a boatbuilder, wages clerk, teacher, librarian, labourer and freelance publisher's editor. He and his wife (and plot consultant) live with their children in the Forest of Dean on the borders of England and Wales. He serves on the committee of the Crime Writers' Association.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Call the Dying
(
2004)
Hodder Sep 04
The American Boy
(Flamingo,
2003)
Flamingo Pbk Jul 04
Requiem For An Angel
(HarperCollins Pbk,
2002)
Death's Own Door
(Hodder & Stoughton,
2001)
NEL Pbk Apr 02
Where Roses Fade
(Hodder & Stoughton,
2000)
NEL Pbk Apr 02
The Office of the Dead
(HarperCollins,
2000)
HarperCollins Pbk Sep 00
The Suffocating Night
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1998)
NEL Pbk May 99
The Judgement of Strangers
(HarperCollins,
1998)
HarperCollins Pbk Apr 99
The Lover of the Grave
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1997)
NEL Pbk 1998
The Four Last Things
(HarperCollins,
1997)
HarperCollins Pbk 1997
The Mortal Sickness
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1995)
Hodder & Stoughton 1995
The Invader
(HarperCollins,
1994)
An Air That Kills
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1994)
NEL Pbk Apr 02
The Barred Window
(Sinclair Stevenson,
1993)
HarperCollins Pbk 1998
Odd Man Out
(Gollancz,
1993)
Negative Image
(HarperCollins,
1992)
The Sleeping Policeman
(Gollancz,
1992)
The Raven On the Water
(HarperCollins,
1991)
Toyshop
(Collins,
1990)
Double Exposure
(Collins,
1990)
Blood Relation
(Gollancz,
1990)
Private Nose
(Walker,
1989)
Snapshot
(Collins,
1989)
Hairline Cracks
(Collins,
1988)
Blacklist
(Collins,
1988)
The Second Midnight
(Collins,
1988)
Freelance Death
(Gollancz,
1987)
An Old School Tie
(Gollancz,
1986)
Our Father's Lies
(Gollancz,
1985)
Waiting for the End of the World
(Gollancz,
1984)
Caroline Minuscule
(Gollancz,
1982)
The American Boy
by Andrew Taylor
