The Judgement of Strangers (Roth Trilogy/Andrew Taylor, Bk 2)

The "prequel" to The Four Last Things journeys back in time a generation to 1970 to chronicle Angel's childhood in a village near London, in a mystery that explores the events that cause a beautiful young girl to grow up to become a serial killer.

This second book in the planned Roth Trilogy looks back a generation at some of the origins of characters and action in the first book, The Four Last Things (1997). Taylor builds a powerful narrative as his struggling characters face an array of temptations that the reader knows early on will overwhelm them. Set in 1970 in the village of Roth, near London, the tale is narrated by David Byfield, a Church of England minister. The near bucolic setting hides a raft of jealousies and passions that quietly build and seethe until the inevitable crest. As David, his new wife, Vanessa, his daughter Rosemary, home for school holiday, and his godson Michael try to adapt to living with one another, other forces obtrude. But David's concern with the church fete stirs up trouble, as does Vanessa's research into the life of the mad poet-priest, Francis Youlgreave, buried in the parish church, and Rosemary's infatuation with the handsome young man who has just moved into Roth Park, the village's big manor house. The clincher is David's growing attraction to the young man's ethereal older sister. Although Taylor has willingly sacrificed some suspense by adopting this reverse chronology, he is sufficiently skillful to keep the reader on edge all the way to the stunning climax.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Twenty-five years before Michael Appleyard's daughter was kidnapped in The Four Last Things (1997), the pre-teen Michael spent the summer of 1970 visiting his godfather David Byfield, the vicar of Roth. Michael wasn't to know that the events of the summer, David's first with his second wife, publisher Vanessa Forde, would run the gamut from adultery to drug dealing to madness to murder, all evidently presided over by the ghost of the Rev. Francis Youlgreave, the mad poet-priest who communed with dark powers and mutilated animals before he was carried to his grave beneath the vicarage chancel. Writing from the lusty, repressed vicar's point of view, Taylor cloaks all the horrid doings in prose as stately and deliberate as Dorothy Sayers's in The Nine Tailors: The first time I kissed Joanna was late in the afternoon of Monday, 24th August. Yet despite portentous foreshadowing out of the Had-I-But-Known school and endless episodes of kissus interruptus, the sense of foul menace mounts to a fine frenzy as David dallies with bored newcomer Joanna Clifford, outraged tearoom historian Audrey Oliphant mourns her beheaded cat, and the villagers punctuate their preparations for the climactic village fete by speculating about what might have happened to village doyenne Lady Youlgreave, mad Francis's horribly dead niece. A superior village mystery that whets the appetite for the promised third volume. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This second volume of Taylor's planned Roth trilogy takes place in 1970, 20 years prior to the events of the first novel, The Four Last Things (St. Martin's, 1997). Vicar David Byfield of Roth, an English village turned London suburb, finds himself caught in a sticky web of deceit. His sexless second marriage, to a woman interested in writing the biography of a vaguely disreputable local Victorian poet, alienates his only daughter. Then David falls in lust/love with a possibly mentally ill young woman haunted at times by the ghost of said poet. Throw in a dying old woman who owns the poet's papers, a murdered cat, and a village crusader, and the "cosy" atmosphere is complete.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.