Requiem for an Angel: The Secret History of a Murderer by Andrew Taylor is a collection of the three books that comprise the Roth Trilogy: The Four Last Things, The Judgment of Strangers, The Office of the Dead. The collection is also published under the title Fallen Angel. Although the three novels can be read separately, together they make for a very powerful novel. Each of the novels is written in a different style while it also alters the reader's perception of each story as the complete history of the serial killer is revealed.

Taylor takes a unique reverse chronology approach with this crime fiction trilogy, starting with recent events in the 1990s and going back into the past, the 1970s and 1958. Since the reader is privy to much more information than the characters, the suspense and sense of foreboding build in the narrative until almost overwhelming. While you know who the psychopath is, you will also be asking where does the responsibility for the murderer lie - nature or nurture? And does the truth lie even further buried in the past?

"The Four Last Things features the Appleyards, present-day inner-city dwellers, potentially happy, despite the vicissitudes of their opposing careers as a woman cleric and a male police officer, until their beloved child is abducted. The reader knows by whom, and into what appalling danger: the victims do not, and God is silent on the subject. In The Judgment of Strangers, when a sternly handsome and passionate priest faces the torture of a sexless and sterile marriage against the cacophonous background of the licentious 1970s, God is equally reticent. Again, there is a child, omnipresent, but often silent. In The Office of the Dead, set in 1958, an element of godlessness prevails in the character of Wendy, the narrator, guest of the Reverend Byfield and his wife and an uncomfortable adornment to the Cathedral Close. She is the sinner, taking refuge from her adulterous husband and frivolous life, inseparable from her bottle of gin and as fine an example of the decent scarlet woman as literature can provide." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg. x

"...[O]n one level, this trilogy is a history of social habits and attitudes from 1958 to the present day, giving Taylor the opportunity to evoke three successive eras with uncanny, atmospheric accuracy.... On another level, the narratives reflect the changing state of the Church of England and the altered status of its sometimes hapless clerics." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg ix

I really think that reading the three novels together makes the story more complete, as well as more horrifying and shocking. As you go back in time you see the secrets kept in the past, the mistakes made, clues that, if they had been taken seriously, could have changed recent events. Not only is each novel set in a different time period, they are also narrated by a different person. While the connection between families is explored, there is also a connection to a mad poet-priest who died fifty years before the serial killer, Angel, was born.

Requiem for an Angel, The Roth Trilogy, is Very Highly Recommended - one of the best; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

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The story of a psychopathic killer told in reverse, from present day to childhood, showing how the killer's personality was warped from a very young age. ( )