An Unpardonable Crime: A Novel - Softcover

Taylor, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401329632 ISBN 13: 9781401329631

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2005

Synopsis

England 1819. Two enigmatic Americans arrive in London and soon after a bank collapses. A man is found dead on a building site; another goes missing in the teeming stews of the city's notorious Seven Dials district. A deathbed vigil ends in an act of theft, and a beautiful heiress flirts with her inferiors. A strange destiny connects each of these events to an American boy, Edgar Allan Poe, who was brought to England by his foster father and sent to the leafy village of Stoke Newington to be educated.

An Unpardonable Crime is a twenty-first-century novel with a nineteenth-century voice. It is both a multilayered literary murder mystery and a love story, its setting ranging from the coal-scented fogs of late-Regency London to the stark winter landscapes of Gloucestershire. And at its center is the boy who does not really belong anywhere, an actor who never learns the significance of his part.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Taylor is the author of many crime and suspense novels. The recipient of the Crime Writers' Association 2009 Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing, Taylor has also won the CWA's John Creasey Award, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, an Audie, and two CWA's Ellis Peters Historical Daggers (a unique achievement), as well as a shortlisting for the CWA's Gold Dagger. His website is www.andrew-taylor.co.uk.

From AudioFile:

It is Regency England in 1819. Our narrator, Thomas Shield, is a schoolmaster who becomes tutor to a pampered English banker's son and an American named Edgar Allan Poe. Soon a stranger accosts the boys, the banker appears to have been killed, a mysterious American appears, and Shield must save himself while protecting those he cares for. Although the references to Edgar Allan Poe are gratuitous, the atmospheric mystery is lots of fun. Simon Vance does a lovely job of making the complex sentences and bygone words of the period writing style easy to listen to. Both his English and his American characters sound right, which is an impressive feat. And the large cast, from English boys to East End women to a middle-aged black Canadian servant, are believable. Entirely involving. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1401329632
• ISBN 13: 9781401329631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 485