Tangled Web UK Review September 2003
The American Boy by
Andrew Taylor
pbk out February 08
(Harper Perennial)
at £7.99
Andrew Taylor has written a number of excellent crime novels, among them the Lydmouth series set in the cloying and claustrophobic suburban society of 1950’s Britain. In The American Boy, Taylor takes us back to the nineteenth century and creates a Gothic novel which resonates with intrigue and has the satisfying literary flavour of a classic. Teacher Thomas Shield is the narrator who after recovering from "disordered wits" brought on by his experiences fighting in the war against Napoleon is grateful to get employment at Manor House School in the village of Stoke Newington. Through two of his charges, the young Charlie Frant and his friend Edgar Allan Poe (the American boy of the title who is living in England with his foster parents) Shield meets beautiful Sophie Frant and her vivacious cousin Flora Carswall and finds himself falling in love. But in the connections between the families there are also secrets and scandals. The collapse of a bank threatens financial ruin, an unkempt stranger shows a disquieting interest in Charlie and Edgar, a dying man suddenly changes his will and Shield has to identify a corpse. Taylor has researched his novel carefully and there is an authentic ring to the style, the dialogue and description. He has exploited the mysteries that surround the life of Edgar Allan Poe and an appendix outlines some of his sources, though this is really Shield’s story rather than Poe’s.
M.E.N. 13.9.03
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder)
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