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Andrew Taylor (1) (1951–)

Author of The American Boy

For other authors named Andrew Taylor, see the disambiguation page.

Andrew Taylor (1) has been aliased into Andrew Saville.

53+ Works 5,425 Members 335 Reviews 10 Favorited

Series

Works by Andrew Taylor

Works have been aliased into Andrew Saville.

The American Boy (2003) 963 copies
The Ashes of London (2017) 554 copies
The Anatomy of Ghosts (2010) 531 copies
Bleeding Heart Square (2008) 469 copies
The Four Last Things (1997) 226 copies
The Fire Court (2018) 199 copies
The Scent of Death (2013) 186 copies
The Office of the Dead (2000) 166 copies
The Judgement of Strangers (1998) 158 copies
An Air That Kills (1994) 144 copies
The King's Evil (2019) 126 copies
A Stain on the Silence (2006) 124 copies
The Silent Boy (2014) 118 copies
The Last Protector (2020) 104 copies
Call the Dying (2004) 104 copies
Caroline Minuscule (1982) 102 copies
Requiem for an Angel (2002) 89 copies
The Lover of the Grave (1997) 88 copies
The Mortal Sickness (1996) 85 copies
Where Roses Fade (2003) 85 copies
The Royal Secret (2021) 81 copies
Naked to the Hangman (2006) 78 copies
The Suffocating Night (1998) 73 copies
Death's Own Door (2001) 70 copies
An Old School Tie (1986) 53 copies
Fireside Gothic (2016) 48 copies
The Barred Window (1993) 46 copies
The Second Midnight (1987) 41 copies
The Shadows of London (2023) 39 copies
The Raven on the Water (1991) 37 copies
Our Fathers' Lies (1985) 34 copies
Freelance Death (1987) 28 copies
The Sleeping Policeman (1992) 25 copies
The Long Sonata of the Dead (2013) 16 copies
Blood Relation (1990) 13 copies
Broken Voices (2014) 13 copies
The Invader (1994) 10 copies
Odd Man Out (1993) 8 copies
Blacklist (1989) 7 copies
Toyshop (1990) 7 copies
Negative Image (1992) 5 copies
The Leper House (2014) 5 copies
The Scratch (2014) 3 copies
The Private Nose (1995) 2 copies

Associated Works

Works have been aliased into Andrew Saville.

The Man on the Balcony (1968) — Introduction, some editions — 1,311 copies
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 (2012) — Contributor — 29 copies
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8 (2011) — Contributor — 28 copies
Perfectly Criminal (1996) — Contributor — 23 copies
The Verdict of Us All (2006) — Contributor — 21 copies
Motives for Murder (2016) 20 copies
Deadly Pleasures (2013) — Contributor — 19 copies
Original Sins (2010) — Contributor — 11 copies
The Arvon Book of Crime and Thriller Writing (2012) — Contributor — 10 copies
Crime in the City (2004) — Contributor — 9 copies
Past Crimes: Perfectly Criminal 3 (1998) — Contributor — 4 copies
Moord uit het boekje (2013) — Contributor — 3 copies

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Andrew Taylor in British & Irish Crime Fiction (July 2008)

Reviews

The Second Midnight did not hold my attention whatsoever, very slow-moving in some parts of the story. I won this in a Goodreads giveaway, so I have never read anything by this author. I was not impressed with his writing style at all.
 
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JKJ94 | 4 other reviews | Jul 27, 2023 |
When a disfigured corpse is found on a building site Cat Hakesby has to halt her work and calls in her friend Marwood to see if he can get works resumed. Marwood is drawn into the hunt for the killer as there are links to his nemesis the Duke of Buckingham and his henchman. Meanwhile the King is plotting the seduction of Louise, an impoverished French noblewoman, who is being groomed as a spy for France. Can the two be linked?
As ever, Taylor has produced a wonderful plot from scant historical records. His characters go from strength to strength, Cat trying to be independent in a time when this was no always possible, Marwood morally trying to steer a course in a corrupt Court. Here the tale is based on the story of Louise de Keroualle, mistress of the ageing Charles II, however it is far more sympathetic to her than most histories. As ever, genuine historical figures make cameo appearances, here it is John Evelyn, but it seems so plausible because of the quality of the writing. A triumph of historical fiction.… (more)
 
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pluckedhighbrow | Mar 11, 2023 |
The three stories in this collection were originally published as separate “Kindle Singles” but they complement each other very well. Despite their different settings, they share some overlapping themes. More importantly, they all express the atmosphere of old-fashioned eeriness evoked by the well-chosen title Fireside Gothic. This is not blood-and-gore horror, but the type of other-worldly terror which creeps under the reader’s skin. I’ve read a blurb comparing these stories to Andrew Michael Hurley’s brand of folk horror, The Loney in particular. Even this is widely off the mark. If anything, these works are more similar to the ghostly tales of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries or the sort of pastiche (used in its most positive sense) which you would expect from contemporary authors such as Susan Hill.

A perfect example is the opener – Broken Voices. Set in the years prior to the First World War, its protagonists are two teenage students at a Cathedral school who unexpectedly get to spend the Christmas holidays at their school, lodging with a retired teacher. Inspired by ghostly tales about a long-dead composer haunting the cathedral, the boys set off on a nocturnal hunt for the lost score of an anthem, supposedly the composer’s masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea.

The story’s ecclesiastical and scholarly setting is one which M.R. James or E.F. Benson would have found familiar, and reading it gave me the same sort of shivers up the spine which I get from these authors. It helped that I was reading Broken Voices on the first (cold)ish Saturday in my part of the world, and that on the same day I was due to take part in an early Christmas concert. I always savour these types of serendipities which complement the content of a story I’m reading and help me delve into its atmosphere. (I remember the same type of feeling when I was reading Charles Palliser’s The Unburied in December a couple of years back). Indeed, Broken Voices is my favourite in this collection, despite its anticlimactic ending.

The premise of The Leper House is markedly different but, despite its modern trappings (a broken-down car in a remote coastal area with no satnav or phone coverage), it also harks back to a classic trope in ghost stories: on a stormy night, the male narrator visits an old house and meets its intriguing (female) inhabitant but then cannot find the building when he returns to look for it in the sobering light of day. (A similar narrative device is used in Oliver Onions’s The Cigarette Case, a ghost story whose details are strangely identical to a “real-life” incident recounted about an old house in Valletta, Malta. I wonder whether this is a case of art imitating life, or the other way round. But I digress…) I will not give away any further plot details, except to state that Taylor takes this premise to unexpected, genre-bending conclusions.

M.R. James used to say that sex is distracting in a supernatural tale. However, at the heart of The Scratch, is a torrid infatuation between Clare, a middle-aged mother who is more-or-less-happily married to Gerald, and Gerald’s orphaned nephew Jack, who has just returned from Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The story is narrated by Clare, and her guilty musings about this sudden passion for her disturbed lodger are as involving as the work’s supernatural elements. Elements which, one must say, are vague and, possibly, just the result of the protagonists’ feverish imagination – a scratch on Jack’s arm that refuses to heal, Jack’s unnatural revulsion towards his relatives’ pet cat, and his obsession with a phantom big cat which seems to be roaming the nearby forest (although it’s never actually seen except by Jack himself). This is possibly the most original and off-beat of the three stories but, for me, its effect was dampened by the vagueness of its ending – literally a page-load of questions raised – and left unanswered – by the narrator.

Despite these reservations, the collection was right up my street, and I heartily recommend it to fans of classic ghost stories.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/11/fireside-gothic-Andrew-Taylor.html
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JosephCamilleri | 3 other reviews | Feb 21, 2023 |
This is the fourth book in Taylor’s series of thrillers set in mid-17th century London featuring James Marwood, government agent, and his friend Cat Lovett. In this volume Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver and himself once Lord Protector and ruler of England, has returned from exile and appears to be working with the Duke of Buckingham. Marwood is tasked with discovering their plans and helping to stop any attempt to overthrow King Charles. Marwood and Lovett both become too closely involved with the plotters and, with their own rather dubious backgrounds in the eyes of the government, risk being swept up in the treachery.

As always Taylor gets the atmosphere and feel of Restoration London just right, drawing the reader in without giving in to, or ignoring, period language and colour. Marwood and Lovett are an attractive pair with complementary skills and a shared outlook on their place in the world. Other characters, both regular and newly introduced, are well drawn.

An exciting thriller set in a colourful and well-drawn world.
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pierthinker | 4 other reviews | Sep 7, 2022 |

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