Call the Dying by
Andrew Taylor
hbk out October 04
Published by Hodder
at £14.99
This is the seventh novel in the Lydmouth series, give or take the odd short
story. Those familiar with the series will know it is set in a fictional town on the
Anglo-Welsh border some time in the years after the Second World War. Anyone
picking up this story afresh, won't realise that immediately. It is only when you get to
chapter two that references to Armstrong Siddeley and Standard Ten Companion cars
give the game away. Still and all, that's soon enough. And new readers are gently
eased into any background information they require to perceive the nuances and
tensions of the regular characters.
Jill Francis, journalist, with a history in Lydmouth, is returning to the town to
help out her friends Philip and Charlotte Wemyss-Brown run the Gazette. Philip has
been taken seriously ill. The timing is unfortunate because their rival, Ivor Fuggle at
the Post, is engaged on a circulation war. And he appears not to be beyond underhand
methods to win the battle. DCI Richard Thornehill's life is not going well either. We
are led to believe that he has had a liaison with Jill Francis in the past, and now his
marriage to Elizabeth is looking very shaky. He and his colleagues are being pilloried
by Fuggle for failing to catch a nuisance offender with unsanitary habits. His children
are keen to get a television set so they can watch the Queen give a broadcast at
Christmas. The arrival of Jill Francis does not do him any favours.
As for Jill, she is attracted to the new doctor, Roger Leddon. Leddon has
taken over old Dr Bayswater's practice, but the former doctor has reneged on a deal
about a new surgery. Meanwhile, just down the road from Bayswater's house, Joe
Rodley is brooding over his wife, Doreen's, incapacity. Maybe it was all Bayswater's
fault she is like she is. Doreen is drawn into conducting a séance by Genevieve
Fuggle and Amy Gwyn-Thomas, who works for the Gazette.
Matters come to a head when a TV engineer disappears, and his yellow glove
is found beside the murdered old Dr Bayswater.
The Lydmouth series has borne comparisons with such disparate entities as
Twin Peaks and the works of P D James. The genteel prose certainly evokes the
image of a provincial society inured in the 1950s - conservative, hierarchical, and
respectful. But Taylor also points to changes that we know are going to sweep all that
away, not least the arrival of television, and Teddy Boys. The deliberate tempo of the
narrative, and the characterisation of some of the protagonists, even their names -
Fuggle, Wemyss-Brown, Mork - carry a hint of a tongue being held in a cheek. But
still the mood is not disturbed. And the restrained and genteel atmosphere runs in
sharp contrast to the dark and desperate shock of the anonymous diary entries that cut
across the foggy tendrils of the winter about to grip Lydmouth. The conclusion, when
it comes, is equally shocking, jarring the reader from the complacency of their 50s
mood, so artfully created by Taylor. Another good book in an acclaimed series.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
Call the Dying by
Andrew Taylor
