Fallen Angel — Andrew Taylor

Like an archaeological dig, The Roth Trilogy strips away the past to reveal the menace lurking in the present: ‘Taylor has established a sound reputation for writing tense, clammy novels that perceptively penetrate the human psyche' â€" Marcel Berlins, The Times

The shadow of past evil hangs over the present in Andrew Taylor's Roth Trilogy as he skilfully traces the influences that have come to shape the mind of a psychopath.

Beginning, in The Four Last Things, with the abduction of little Lucy Appleyard and a grisly discovery in a London graveyard, the layers of the past are gradually peeled away through The Judgement of Strangers and The Office of the Dead to unearth the dark and twisted roots of a very immediate horror that threatens to explode the serenity of Rosington's peaceful Cathedral Close.

Reviews

‘Skilful, elegant, powerfully atmospheric, in which ancient evil shimmers like images trapped in a corridor of mirrors' Philip Oakley, Literary Review

‘A highly praised trilogy of novels whose ecclesiastical background adds to the intense nature of the suspense. They inform not only the heart but the brain since Taylor is a writer blessed with great compassion as well as an unerring eye for historical detail. His flawed heroes and heroines and narrators are people you have met before in the street. Their dilemmas are murderously mundane, but the scale of their tragedies devastating' Sunday Express

About the author

Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of novels, including the Dougal and Lydmouth crime series, the psychological thrillers Bleeding Heart Square and The Anatomy of Ghosts, the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama Fallen Angel, and The American Boy, his No. 1 bestselling historical novel which was a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club choice.

He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it twice) and the CWA's prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the Spectator.