Andrew Taylor

Page Updated: 12/07/2004

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Andrew Taylor - Page 3

The Invader

The Barred Window

Odd Man Out

The Sleeping Policeman

The Raven On the Water

First British Edition HarperCollins (1994)

The Invader
Who is Elvira Bladon? All Adam knows is, she's blonde, American and stunning - with a gift for making him look foolish. And that's not all that's worrying him: why has she been snooping at The Sanctuary, the centre for birds of prey where Adam works? He knows he has to find out - before she can cause even more trouble there. But Elvira has perfected the art of being elusive, and Adam is forced to follow a trail from Turkey to America, with violence and kidnapping going along for the ride ...
Visit Andrew at his own Website for more info on his fiction for Children and Teenagers.

Paperback - HarperCollins (1998)

First British Edition Sinclair Stevenson (1993)

The Barred Window
See Review by Liz Lees
"Is there a spell on this place?" I remember asking my mother. "Don't be so stupid, Thomas," she said. `Magic isn't real."
Thomas Penmarsh has always lived at Finisterre, the house by the sea. He sleeps in the room with the barred window and looks down on the cats in the garden. He is 48: but he has been an old man since one evening in 1967 when he lost everything he valued. I am as old as I feel.
Then Cousin Esmond came back and rescued him from despair and the cats; Esmond always looks after Thomas. As children they chanted, "All for one, and one for all. United we stand, divided we fall." But now darling Alice wants to come home too.
The divisions deepen. If Alice comes back, Thomas can no longer live happily ever after. Alice will spoil it all because she brings the past with her. From the moment of her conception, she has been a child of enchantment, madness and death.
'Trust me,' Esmond says, just as he did in the past. 'I'll look after you. Trust me.'
Visit Andrew at his own Website for more info
"...An intelligent, exciting psychological drama... A powerful feeling of something nasty just around the corner prevails... An unusual achievement" Daily Mail
"Clammy... atmospheric... showing admirable control over matters psychological" The Times
"Like Hitchcock, Taylor pitches extreme and gothic events within a hair's breadth of normality. His novel is a study in the ruthlessness and brutality with which individuals seek to secure themselves in shifting relations of dependence." Times Literary Supplement
"... Classically paced and proportioned... A slow burner, most cunningly constructed, plays havoc with your sympathies" Literary Review
"This is not merely well crafted and exciting but a novel of considerable power, with some fascinating characters whose lives we explore in depth. The ending is splendidly ambiguous" Publishing News
"A psychological tingler with more than a touch of the Daphne du Mauriers... this author knows precisely how to wield suspense" Independent on Sunday
"This cleverly crafted jigsaw is a masterly portrait of a seemingly guileless narrator... Beautifully measured... Taylor's understated thriller generates a dark, hypnotic pull" Time Out

First British Edition Gollancz (1993)

Odd Man Out
William Dougal, the amoral but appealing private detective, is on the road to respectability: he is a responsible father and holds sown a job. This happy state of affairs suffers a rude setback, though, when he kills a man during a squabble. The killing may have been unpremeditated, but Dougal has no intention of going to the police; instead he is left with the task of disposing of a large, unwieldy body, currently lying on the floor of his girlfriend's house.
Then, seemingly fortuitously, his old rival and current employer Hanbury arrives, a man uniquely qualified to assist with this sort of problem. Indeed, Hanbury is delighted to help a friend in need, but as always there is a price - a price, as Dougal is to discover, higher - and more dangerous than expected.
Ironic, full of black humour, Odd Man Out is a clever, subtle novel from one of today's most talented and admired young crime novelists.

First British Edition Gollancz (1992)

The Sleeping Policeman
When William Dougal is asked by a young doctor, Graham Hanslope, to investigate a case of blackmail, he suspects - quite rightly - that crucial information is being withheld. Visiting the doctor's country cottage, Dougal finds the small village community seething with suspicions and rivalry.
A local hit-and-run incident, adultery and a spate of burglaries lead inexorably to murder. All the evidence points in one direction, but Dougal, as usual, comes up with another answer, one so bizarre it will be almost impossible to prove ...
"This simple summary does not do justice to the complexity, or to the subtlety with which the author portrays his characters. This is undoubtedly Andrew Taylor's best book yet" Evening Standard
"Enjoyable voyeuristic peep at greedy, back-scratching local community" Guardian

First British Edition HarperCollins (1991)

The Raven On the Water
A mist rose a few feet above the surface ... and floating on the water was a great black bird.
Back in 1964, in the wild and overgrown garden of a Somerset vicarage, Peter Redburn and his best friend Richard had spent a golden summer holiday playing out their special game - a private world of Roman emperors, secret rituals and oaths of loyalty sworn for eternity. But the boys' peace was suddenly threatened when an unwelcome new playmate introduced sinister elements of a mystical religion into their innocent game. Then, one terrible night, the childish dreamworld turned into a nightmare.
The tragic events of that summer have never been fully explained and, ever since, all those present have been haunted by chilling memories. Years later a family death brings them together once more, rekindling bitter childhood rivalries and reviving half-forgotten secrets of jealousy and betrayal. It seem they all have their own reasons to remember - and even more pressing reasons to forget. Peter has never been able to escape his own feeling of guilt. When he stumbles across a hoard of childhood memories, he knows her must search out the truth. But the sordid secrets he unearths have chilling implications. Once more the air is filled with portents of disaster ...
The Raven on the Water, a haunting, mysterious novel in which the chilling legacy of a childhood tragedy leads to deadly adult intrigues, demonstrates once again Andrew Taylor's stunning originality and acclaimed ability to combine witty, sophisticated plots with dark and compelling atmosphere.