An Unpardonable Crime
Andrew Taylor
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Hyperion
ISBN: 1401301029

England 1819. Two Americans arrive in London & soon after a bank collapses.

A man is found brutally murdered on a building site; another goes missing in the teeming stew of the city's notorious Seven Dials district. A deathbed vigil ends in theft, & a beautiful heiress flirts with her inferiors.

What connects these separate events? An American boy, brought to England by his foster father & sent to the sleepy village of Stoke Newington to be educated.

An Unpardonable Crime is deeply atmospheric -- 1819 was at the tail end of the wild & culture upsetting Regency Era & before Victoria ascended the throne, so it's not as dense as a Victorian novel -- think Jane Austen on steroids! It is also a time when the English classes were sorting themselves out, when boys' boarding schools were sprouting up all over the place, & when Americans could come to “Old Country” with impunity, the War of 1812 having at last ceased.

However, greed & men with evil designs flourished, absconding with fortunes, disappearing from creditors & murdering those who gave them trouble. & then there are the bloodlines, either to be reinforced or broken. Inheritance, bastardy & power were as rampant as typhoid.

What a feast is Andrew Taylor's An Unpardonable Crime, the title of which comes Edgar Allen Poe's poem “William Wilson”, A richly textured story of propriety, a lonely schoolmaster, a beautiful widow, a charming bastard, unkindly good deeds & half-revealed implications. It is all about partnerships, betrayals, unrequited love & the two boys, so alike, who are caught up in their families' betrayals.

If you relish historical mystery fiction, based on journals & research, then An Unpardonable Crime is a mystery right up your cobblestoned alley.

More from Andrew Taylor:
The Four Last Things
The Judgement of Strangers
The Office of the Dead
The Lover of the Grave
Caroline Minuscule
Unfortunately most of his books are not available in the U.S.:
Waiting for the End of the World; Our Fathers' Lies; An Old School Tie; Freelance Death; The Second Midnight; Blacklist; Toyshop; Odd Man Out & many, many more.
(04/11/04)

Rebecca