Taylor’s Touch Brings Success

Although he produces his “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots only once per month, critic-author Mike Ripley still manages to surprise us every now and then with a modicum of news not spotted elsewhere. His January column, for instance, includes this brief item:

At last, at the fag-end of the plague year, there was some good news. The award-winning crime writer Andrew Taylor, the most popular panelist (because he knows things) in CrimeFest’s iconic quiz, “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Cluedo,” has need of a bigger trophy cabinet, having received the Historical Writers’ Association [annual Gold Crown Award] for best novel of 2020 for The King’s Evil.

The Gold Crown Award is meant to honor “the best historical novel first published in the UK in English.” You’d think there would be some announcement of Taylor’s win on the Historical Writers’ Association’s own Web site. But at last check, there is not. What can be found there, however, is a brief interview with Taylor—conducted last fall—in which he talks about The King’s Evil, the third volume in his 17th-century mystery series starring James Marwood and Cat Lovett.

Taylor’s fifth Marwood/Lovett yarn, The Royal Secret, is scheduled for release in Great Britain this coming April 29.

Pierce’s Picks: “The Silent Boy”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Silent Boy, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins UK)

The Gist: “Taylor’s new novel utilizes two of the characters from his last book, The Scent of Death,” explains a review of The Silent Boy featured on the Web site of The Forest Bookshop, in Coleford, England. “In 1778, London clerk Edward Savill was obliged to turn detective in the desperate last days of British colonial New York, posted there by his patron Mr. Rampton, his wife Augusta’s uncle. Now, 14 years later, Savill’s estranged wife has apparently been murdered in the midst of the post-[French] Revolution Terrors, which splattered guillotine-riddled Paris with torrents of blood in 1792. But a murder mystery isn’t the thrust of this story--rather, it concerns a child-custody battle involving, on one side, [Augusta’s 10-year-old son] Charles’ claimed aristocratic father, holed up in a ‘Somersetshire’ mansion to which he and his Parisian retinue have fled with the child, versus Savill acting on behalf of Rampton and also Savill’s daughter--Charles’ half-sister. … What is a mystery are the protagonists’ motives for wanting custody of Charles--it certainly doesn’t appear many of them have the child’s interests at heart.” Writing in Shots, critic L.J. Hurst carries the plot line further: “Then early one morning the boy, Charles, disappears, at just about the time a stranger has been spied on the edge of the estate. Savill produces his warrant and invokes his powers on the local magistrate, but they can do little more than follow the strangers back to London. It is in London that events develop James Bond-style: breaking-and-entering, mysterious cabs driving by, doors left open to overhear what is being said, knives used, pistols fired. Or to put it another way: double-crossing, triple-crossing, returns from the dead, simpletons more trusting than they should have been.”

What Else You Should Know: A recipient in 2009 of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement, Andrew Taylor is also the author of the Lydmouth stories, the Roth Trilogy, and Bleeding Heart Square (2008). His novels rarely fail to impress, though they may start out slowly; give them a chance to prove their value, and you shouldn’t be disappointed. I haven’t yet read The Silent Boy, but some of the blurbs convince me that I shall relish the experience. “I enjoyed this book very much indeed,” says C.J. Sansom, the author of Dominion as well as the Matthew Shardlake historical mysteries. “I found the evocation of late 18th-century England, and the French exiles, effortlessly authentic, the hunt for Charles gripping, and the portrayal and first-person narrative of the helpless, traumatized, yet strong and resourceful little boy moving and believable. An excellent work.”

Pierce’s Picks: “The Scent of Death”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Scent of Death, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins UK):
British fictionist Taylor has been making rival authors jealous ever since he won the John Creasey Memorial Award from the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) for Caroline Minuscule, his 1982 debut work. Since then he’s gone on to create several broadly commended series, among them the Lydmouth stories and the Roth Trilogy, but in recent years has concentrated on standalone historical works with a distinctly criminal bent. The American Boy (2003; retitled An Unpardonable Crime in the States) built a gothic-seasoned mystery around a young Edgar Allan Poe, while Bleeding Heart Square (2008) was a concoction of intrigue focused on a manipulative London landlord who may have been implicated in a woman’s disappearance. It was in the wake of Bleeding Heart Square’s publication that Taylor received the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for his lifetime achievement in crime writing. The Scent of Death, being released this week in the UK, transports readers back to still-tiny New York City in the midst of the American Revolution. Edward Savill, a “coming man” with the British government’s colonial department, lands at Manhattan Island in 1778 with the assignment to analyze claims on property made by British loyalists rudely displaced by the independence movement. Right away, however, Savill finds himself mixed up with death--not simply the discovery of a corpse afloat in the East River, but the slaying of another man in a particularly squalid district known as Canvas Town. The authorities don’t evince much interest in these wrongdoings; they have enough worrying them, what with spies and refugees streaming into town, and suspicious fires threatening every stick of local architecture. “Justice,” in some cases, means little more than hanging a convenient black man. Yet even as Savill tries to carry out his assigned duties--distracted frequently by questions involving his hosts, the generally respected but odd Wintour clan--he becomes embroiled in a murder inquiry, the results of which could be as consequential as any threats posed by rebellious colonists. Taylor’s plot is intricate and absorbing, but it’s the quality of his prose and the depth of his characterizations that will most likely win you over.

* * *

Also new and worth your noticing this week: Stephan Talty’s Black Irish (Ballantine), about a Harvard-educated young police detective, Absalom “Abbie” Kearney, whose return to her native Buffalo, New York, leaves her scrambling for answers after the sadistic murder of a man in a church basement--an offense that threatens to expose long-held secrets within her own family; and Angel’s Gate (Scribner), P.G. Sturges’ third wryly humorous novel about “vigilante-for-hire” Dick Henry. His search here for a missing woman leads Henry--aka the Shortcut Man--into the circle of an aging but randy Hollywood mogul, and soon draws him as well into a historical puzzle involving a death on a boat and a screenplay of uncertain authorship.

The Book You Have to Read: “Caleb Williams,” by William Godwin

(Editor’s note: This is the 97th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from British crime and historical novelist Andrew Taylor, last year’s winner of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement and the author of The Anatomy of Ghosts, which is due out this coming September from Michael Joseph/Penguin.)

If today’s readers and writers of crime fiction look over their shoulders, who are lurking in the shadows behind Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Wilkie Collins? Edgar Allan Poe, of course, and Charles Dickens. As it happens, those two authors met once, in Philadelphia in March 1842, and by a quirk of fate we know one of the subjects they talked about--a third writer, William Godwin, who had died six years before.

It’s an odd, maybe significant coincidence. Godwin is best known today for his novel Caleb Williams, which stands in the shadows behind the shadows--it’s a book that invisibly underpins the genre, The Rap Sheet, and much else. You can even argue that, with Caleb Williams, Godwin invented crime fiction, and that he was the first noir author.

Noir? It’s a big claim, but it holds up.

A cozy crime story takes place in an ideal world where the detective restores perfection by rooting out the murderer who has briefly imposed a blemish on it.

Noir, on the other hand, has the opposite dynamic. It’s set in a fundamentally corrupt world that’s wall-to-wall blemishes, a place where the investigator, for all his flaws, is the best thing available to a morally upright individual. A noir hero can never make the world a wonderful place. Faced with a crime, he can only do his best, according to his lights, and hope he’ll maybe survive until next time. It’s a job description for Caleb Williams.

William Godwin was remarkable by any standards. He was an English anarchist at the time of the French Revolution (which he naturally supported). His first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote a seminal feminist text. His daughter Mary married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote Frankenstein (1818). His stepdaughter had an illegitimate child with Lord Byron. Godwin wrote novels partly to make money and partly as vehicles for his philosophical beliefs.

He published Caleb Williams in 1794, five years after the Revolution. It’s not a whodunit, and it’s only a mystery for the first third of the story. But it centers on a crime and murder in Britain, and on the methods and consequences of investigating that murder. It’s a novel of considerable and often uncomfortable psychological penetration. And it’s full of incredibly vivid and realistic snapshots of the world in which its author lived. It’s one of the prototypes of the crime novel not only in the way it concerns a murder but also--as Poe himself noted--in the way it was constructed, from effects back to causes.

The rest of this piece describes the bones of the story. But the bare summary won’t spoil your enjoyment if you read the novel afterwards. It’s the body of this book that counts, not the bones that support it.

Caleb Williams is poor but intelligent. Orphaned at 18, he’s given a job as a secretary by the local squire, Ferdinando Falkland, a man of great refinement who is drawn into a feud with a boorish neighbor. When that neighbor is murdered, Falkland is the chief suspect--but he’s so gentlemanly that his fellow magistrates can’t believe he could commit a sneaky little slaying. Two local farmers are hanged instead.

In the second part of the book, Caleb investigates the murder and, with growing horror, realizes that Falkland not only killed the neighbor but let two innocent men hang for his crime. For many authors, the revelation of the real murderer would be the climax. In fact we’re not even halfway through, and the real climax is yet to come.

At this point, the narrative switches: until now, Caleb has pursued Falkland; but now it’s the other way round. Falkland treats his hapless secretary with increasing hostility: it’s almost as if he transfers the hatred he feels for himself to Caleb, the man who won’t let him forget what he has done.

Caleb’s attempt to expose his master backfires, and he’s flung into jail without trial. His experiences as a prisoner are described in harsh, documentary detail. At last Caleb escapes. But he’s friendless and penniless. The resources of the state and of society are in league against him. And the worst is still on the horizon.

In the last part of Godwin’s novel, Caleb is on the run. Falkland mobilizes the full weight of government authority to hunt down the entirely innocent secretary--and everyone else joins in. There are even broadsheets and ballads that portray him as a master criminal.

Caleb falls in with a gang of thieves living wild in a ruined forest mansion presided over by the landlady from hell. It’s interesting how Godwin describes these dangerous criminals--some are also victims, and deserve a bit of sympathy despite their crimes; but others are essentially corrupt, a sort of lawless mirror image of the sinister authority figures who control the country for their own benefit.

With the world against him, Caleb ranges across England, taking a variety of disguises. He becomes a beggar, a farmer’s son, a watchmaker, and a math teacher, an Orthodox Jew--and he even ekes out a living as a hack writer on Grub Street, which will strike a grimly familiar chord for many of The Rap Sheet’s contributors.

Despite his ingenuity, his perseverance and his abilities, Caleb can never escape the past: sooner or later Falkland or his avenging agents catch up with him. The great irony here is that Caleb, who has investigated and solved a crime, finds that no one will believe him: on the contrary, he’s treated as the criminal.

Finally, Caleb’s story reaches its end. In fact two of them, neither of which is exactly cheery. One of the endings is the standard, published version; but an earlier, gloomier variant was published in the 1960s, and is included in the excellent Penguin edition of this novel.

Neither conclusion makes for easy reading. Caleb is a flawed hero, just as Falkland is a flawed villain. Everyone is guilty. In the end, everyone has to pay for his sins.

William Godwin created a monster he did not entirely understand: Caleb Williams grew in ways he neither planned nor expected, and the result is too powerful, too quirky, to fit neatly inside the philosophical envelope he planned for it.

In other words, Godwin set out to write a philosophical tract and ended up inventing Noir.

Past Master

Britain’s Andrew Taylor has seen more than 20 of his crime novels published on both sides of the Atlantic. His very first book, Caroline Minuscule (1982), picked up the John Creasey Memorial Award (now the New Blood Dagger) from the Crime Writers’ Association, and he’s been nominated for the Gold Dagger and Edgar awards. Earlier this evening, Taylor was given the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for his “lifetime achievement” in crime-writing.

Nobody can say he hasn’t made a name for himself.

Taylor’s works include the Lydmouth Series and the Roth Trilogy (the latter of which was filmed for British television as Fallen Angel, broadcast in 2007). A writer of significant depth and exceptional quality, he is the only author who has twice been awarded the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, for The Office of the Dead (2000) and The American Boy (2003). The American Boy was released to great acclaim in the United States in 2004 as An Unpardonable Crime. Its story is set in 19th-century London and features the character of Edgar Allan Poe as a child, exploring a little-known aspect of his early life.

In mid-March, we were fortunate enough to participate, with Taylor, in A Qualcuno Piace Giallo, the ninth crime-writing festival to be held in Brescia, Italy. We seized on that opportunity to ask him a few questions about his latest novel, his approach to penning historical mysteries, and whether his accumulation of prizes has made his life easier or more challenging.

Michael Gregorio: You have been writing full-time since 1981. Where does your inspiration tend to come from? Do you start with a character and a situation, or do the plot and its resolution provide the driving force for your invention?

Andrew Taylor: I never have much idea about plot beforehand, let alone its resolution. The books generally start with two or three ideas I want to explore further--which may be setting, character, theme, or even a title that seems bursting with possibilities.

MG: Are you thinking of a particular title?

AT: Well, for example, the Roth Trilogy began with the title of the first book, The Four Last Things [1997]. At once it gave me a sense of the sort of novel it would be--both its atmosphere and the religious motif running through it. And then came the idea that it would be three novels, not one, and that the overall storyline would move backwards in time. (Plots that move forward are so yesterday).

MG: You have specialized to a great extent in historical mystery and historical crime-writing, placing your novels in different eras and locations. Why are you so drawn to stories set in the past?

AT: Most of my early books are set in the present, but many of my more recent ones are set in the past (if only in the 1950s). It’s partly because I have an abiding interest in history, so the research is fun; partly because I think the past reveals a great deal about the present, often in unexpected ways; and partly because the past is paradoxically liberating--you don’t have to tie yourself down to rigorous modern police procedures, for example, or bear in mind the impact of genetic fingerprinting or mobile phones on your storyline.

MG: What sort of a relationship do you have with technology?

AT: I find it can be constricting in fiction--not least because it so rapidly goes out of date. (Think of all those antiquated computers and mobile phones in early series of The Wire.) Also, readers of novels tend to be more interested in people than machines. But I do find technology provides many wonderful excuses to avoid work, and I am completely devoted to my iMac. I put together a little promotional video for Bleeding Heart Square, for example, and could pretend that I was working.

MG: Could you tell us about that book, Bleeding Heart Square, which was released by Hyperion in the States last month? It’s set in the 1930s. Did you develop the story before you began researching the period, or did you make a conscious choice to set the tale in a historical and social context which already interested you?

AT: Bleeding Heart Square had three starting points for me: the real-life Moat Farm Murder of 1899, a classic late-Victorian case which my granny told me about when I was 12. She and her sister used to play at the farm where the murder later took place, and her uncle and granny sold it to the killer and his victim. I wanted to examine the case in fictional terms, especially from the woman victim’s viewpoint. I chose to relocate it to the 1930s, because I had been research­ing the British Union of Fascists, and become amazed by how significant they were in the 1930s; we Brits have tended to airbrush many inconvenient details from the record. The third factor was a publishing lunch (see--they do have a vital role to play!) in a [London] restaurant in (the real) Bleeding Heart Yard. It’s a place with many legends and stories attached to it, mentioned in Dickens, on the site of a lost medieval palace--in other words, it seemed the perfect setting for the sort of crime novel that I wanted to write, and it even provided the title. I made it a “square” rather than “yard” to give myself more room to maneuver in terms of the geography.

MG: Books like The American Boy have been amazingly well-received. But which one of your historical crime novels are you most happy with? And why do you like it particularly?

AT: The American Boy was perhaps the most absorbing to write, as I tried to write in a pastiche of early 19th-century English. But my Lydmouth Series tries to develop a picture of the 1950s in provincial England/Wales, and after eight books I feel I could go on exploring that surprisingly strange time and place forever. And then the 1930s were fascinating too.

MG: What do you see as the essential ingredients of a “good read”?

AT: In a single word? Narrative. If you can hook the reader’s attention, you can take him/her anywhere and do anything.

MG: And what does Andrew Taylor read when he isn’t writing?

AT: Well, a lot of my reading has to do with reviewing--I’m The Spectator’s crime-fiction reviewer, and I also review for The Independent. Recently I’ve enjoyed All the Dead Voices, by Declan Hughes, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s My Soul to Take.

For pleasure, I’m currently reading an early Dickens novel, Barnaby Rudge, which I’d never read before, and which is turning out to be much better than (for some reason) I expected it to be. It’s set in 1780s at the time of the Gordon Riots. And of course there are plenty of crimes, including murder. Before that it was Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, which was brilliant.

MG: After twice winning the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, you’re now the recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger. How did you react to winning that latest prize? And will it make it easier or harder for you to write in the future?

AT: Prizes do make thing harder in one sense, because they raise expectations--your own and other people’s. My first novel, Caroline Minuscule, was lucky enough to win a prize, and I remember thinking, How can I ever better that? As for the Diamond Dagger, wonderful though it is, it is billed as a lifetime award, so perhaps it’s downhill from now on. But since I was selected for the award by fellow crime writers, it is also a hugely encouraging professional vote of confidence ... But whether the writing is easier or harder as a result, I do know that the writing will continue.

MG: What are you working at the moment?

AT: At present I’m stuck in 1786 with a book called The Anatomy of Ghosts, which is set in Cambridge University and features a ghost and several corpses. Unfortunately I haven’t found the emergency exit yet. But I am still looking!

(Author photo by Caroline Silverwood Taylor.)

A Taylor-Made Affair

While the New York City crime and thriller fiction scene is all abuzz over this week’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards presentation and its associated events, the focus in London has been on the bestowal of the Crime Writers’ Association’s annual Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. That coveted commendation was given this evening to British novelist Andrew Taylor.

The traditional venue for the CWA Diamond Dagger ceremony is the Savoy Hotel on the Strand. But that establishment is currently undergoing renovations, so tonight’s event was moved to the smaller Gore Hotel, located between Knightsbridge and Kensington. Although it’s not as prestigious, the Gore is still pretty swank, in my opinion.

My editor at Shots, Mike Stotter, arrived at the Gore early, as he’s recently been elected to the CWA management committee, and had to attend a meeting prior to the awards presentation. While I waited for him, I found a place in the hotel bar with Peter Lovesey (The Headhunters), a delightful writer and former Diamond Dagger winner (in 2000). Lovesey sat for several years as the chair of judges on the CWA Short Story Dagger committee, and it is in that way that I’d come to know him. However, I had not seen him for some while, so was pleased to catch up a bit on his life and work.

Cartier Diamond Dagger ceremony participants Peter Lovesey, Margaret Yorke, Andrew Taylor, H.R.F. Keating, Arnaud Bamberger, and Colin Dexter

I’ve long enjoyed these Diamond Dagger ceremonies. They inevitably bring out the stars and offer stimulating conversations. Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, John Harvey, and Ian Rankin have all received this accolade from their crime-writing peers. So did Sue Grafton last year, but I was unable to attend that event, due to a diary clash. (Fortunately, I had met her during the Shamus Awards presentation at Bouchercon 2003 in Las Vegas.)

Tonight’s event was no less interesting, with several previous Diamond Dagger recipients in attendance: Margaret Yorke, H.R.F. Keating, Colin Dexter, and of course the aforementioned Lovesey. There were so many writers, editors, and publishing professionals present, that even I would find it difficult to name-drop them all. Stotter and I could only mingle in amazement, our hands around flutes of champagne.

Author Lesley Horton, the exiting chair of the CWA, stepped to the front of the room and the crowd fell into a hush. She began by welcoming us to the Gore Hotel, and then introduced Margaret Murphy, her successor as the association’s chair. Horton followed this with a few words about how surprised Andrew Taylor had been when she called him to explain that the CWA committee had selected him as the latest Cartier Diamond Dagger recipient. Finally, she thanked members of the CWA committee for their assistance during her tenure as chair, and then handed over center stage to Monsieur Arnaud Bamberger, the managing director of Cartier.

One of the annual highlights of this ceremony is Bamberger’s amusing address, rendered with his quaint French accent. This year proved to be no exception. There was a round of applause when he reiterated that, despite the world’s present economic doldrums, he has ensured that Cartier will maintain its association with the CWA, a relationship that’s been in place now for more than 18 years. After his usual witticisms pertaining to crime writers--or as he likes to refer to them, “super sleuths”--Bamberger extolled the quality of Andrew Taylor’s prose.

Then it was Taylor’s turn in the spotlight. As he took the stand, we raised our champagne glasses in celebration. He opened his acceptance speech in French, which I thought was a wonderful touch. He went on to thank all of us for attending this ceremony, and explained that, as a former CWA committee member himself, he understands the heavy workload all those people take on for the organization. Holding his Dagger prominently aloft, Taylor remarked, “I am hugely honored to receive this award. It’s the sort of award that validates an entire career. What makes it particularly special is that I have been chosen by my fellow crime writers.” Taylor concluded by thanking his wife, Caroline, for her support--and the fact that she had made it possible for him to write full time. His speech was greeted with a round of warm-hearted applause.

More mingling and drinking followed. I was invited out to dinner after this party, but due to having an early meeting scheduled in London for tomorrow, I reluctantly declined. As I boarded my train for home, I found my mind filled with wonderful memories of having first discovered Taylor’s Roth Trilogy. Those three award-winning novels are very deeply disturbing tales, but so thought-provoking that I read all of them over the course of a weekend. I am always amused at how dark the imaginations of crime writers can be, when they are so jolly decent in person. Andrew Taylor is certainly an example of that breed, and a deserving addition to the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Hall of Fame.

The Judgment of Colleagues

Our congratulations go out this morning to novelist Andrew Taylor. The British Crime Writers’ Association has announced that he will receive the 2009 Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, presented “for sustained excellence in crime writing.” As the CWA reminds us,

Andrew Taylor is the best-selling author of the Richard-and-Judy choice The American Boy and the highly-acclaimed Bleeding Heart Square, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Ellis Peters Historical Award.

Andrew Taylor’s first novel, Caroline Minuscule, won the CWA’s John Creasey Award in 1982. He is the only author to have won the Ellis Peters Historical Award twice, in 2001 for The Office of the Dead and in 2003 for The American Boy (about the English boyhood of Edgar Allan Poe), which also won the U.S. Audie in the literary fiction category. He has been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger, the Edgar, and many other awards in the UK and abroad.

Among his other books are the Dougal series, whose central character is as liable to commit murders as solve them; the Lydmouth series, set in the 1950s; and the innovatory Roth Trilogy with its reverse narrative, filmed for ITV as Fallen Angel, starring Charles Dance and Emilia Fox.

Taylor will be presented with his commendation on April 28.

Prior recipients of this award include Sue Grafton, John Harvey, Elmore Leonard, Ian Rankin, and Lawrence Block.

READ MORE: “Andrew Taylor’s Diamond Dagger,” by Martin Edwards (Do You Write Under Your Own Name?).