An Unpardonable Crime [Paperback]

Andrew Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The prolific Taylor (the Roth trilogy, etc.) successfully channels Wilkie Collins in his latest effort, crafting a fluid, atmospheric period thriller. Thomas Shield is a young schoolmaster in Stoke Newington, just outside of London, whose charges include 10-year-old Edgar Allan Poe (as a child, the poet spent five years in England) and a pampered banker's son. The school's routine is disrupted when Shield runs across an eccentric character who displays an unhealthy interest in the two boys. His intervention brings Shield into closer contact with the banker's family and two desirable women. Uncomfortably occupying an uncertain position between master and servant, Shield juggles his instincts for self-preservation with his passions, a task made much harder when the severely mutilated corpse of the banker is discovered shortly after his business collapses. While the murder appears to give Shield a clear path to court the attractive widow, he is unable to ignore clues suggesting that the body is actually someone else's. The enigmatic nature of the protagonist a principled but often passive figure distances him from the reader. Although Taylor does an excellent job in portraying early 19th-century London and writes in a clear, consistent period style, the numerous foreboding references suggest a dramatic psychological twist or a surprising revelation concerning the killer's identity that does not materialize. The use of Poe as a character borders on gratuitous, despite the author's incorporation of biographical details; the youth is peripheral to the plot, and a fictional character could have been substituted with little discernible effect. While this effort is not as successful as Charles Palliser's superb, intricately plotted 19th-century thriller The Quincunx, it is a pleasurable read that will engross many.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Taylor's novel was published in 2003 in the UK as The American Boy. The title character is Edgar Allan Poe, who lived in England from 1816 to 1820 while his foster father, John Allan, set up a British branch of his import-export business. This literary-historical mystery (whose new title nabs a line from Poe's story "William Wilson") incorporates the boyhood Poe, the mystery of the disappearance of Poe's biological father when Poe was an infant, and the later mystery of Poe's behavior and disappearance before his death into a Regency drama of crossed love, class barriers, embezzlement, and murder. All of this comes about through the character of Thomas Shield, Poe's teacher at boarding school, who gets drawn into the wealthy boy's life and into a series of mysteries surrounding the boy. Wonderful evocations of Regency England, suggestive about the later horrors in Poe's life, marred a bit by a cumbersome (almost 500-page) plot and delivery. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 485 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (March 9, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401329632
• ISBN-13: 978-1401329631
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a fantastic read, March 1, 2004

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Unpardonable Crime (Hardcover)

This is all that I' going to "say" about the plot of "An Unpardonable Crime:" that it is set in 1819, and that it opens with our narrator, Thomas Shields, (a young man of education and who has managed to survive the peninsula war, but who has little money and fewer expectations), explaining how he managed to secure a job as an under usher (a sort of tutor) at the Reverend Mr. Bransby's school, and how he came to become so intimately involved in the affairs of the Wavenhoe, Frants and Carswall families, death, greed and murder. To say more, would only detract from the overall enjoyment for anyone who's not yet read this skillfully crafted novel. Enough to say that if you enjoy reading Victorian-era suspenseful novels (like those written by Wilkie Collins, for example), you're bound to enjoy "An Unpardonable Crime." As with many of the novels of similar genre, Andrew Taylor has successfully coloured his novel with a dark and almost menacing atmosphere, added enough intriguing and suspenseful plot twists, and peopled it with characters that both engaged and filled me with loathing. In other words, this was a riveting read. Andrew Taylor did a fantastic job of making England of the early 19th century real and vivid. "An Unpardonable Crime" won the CWA Historical Dagger for 2003, and it definitely deserves the award. I picked up the book after dinner, and had to force myself to put the novel down and go to bed -- it was that "unputdownable!" All in all, a rousing 5 stars!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb epic historical mystery, February 25, 2004

By 

Larry Gandle (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Unpardonable Crime (Hardcover)

There are certain historical novels that are so large and all encompassing that they not only evoke a time and place but truly place the reader realistically in its midst. Immediately coming to mind are the Dickens books that were contemporary when they were written but are considered historical to the present readers. A contemporary book such as THE QUINCUNX by Charles Palliser (who also wrote a testimonial for this work) also comes to mind. Andrew Taylor admirably succeeds in recreating both London and the British countryside of 1819 and peoples the book with enough shadowy and colorful characters to make the trip very worthwhile.
The narrative we are reading is that of Thomas Shield, a tutor at a private school of Stoke Newington. He comes across a child named Charles Frant who is a targeted by the other students as a scapegoat until another young man appears by the name of Edgar Allen. Edgar, by fighting the other students wins a certain amount of respect for himself and for Charles, as well. It is soon thereafter that while walking in the neighborhood, Thomas witnesses an inebriated man accosting the two boys. He rescues them from the situation and a grateful Henry Frant, father of Charles invites Thomas to come to the house as a tutor. So begins the long tale of Thomas' intertwined relationships with this household.
Andrew Taylor is a unique author of many talents. This very large epic novel follows close on the heels of the wonderful Roth trilogy. There is much good in this current work. The strength of any historical novel is the ability of the author to bring the era to life with a compelling and intriguing story. With that he readily succeeds. A problem, however, is that he takes so darn long to get through it. When we finally reach the end, the exposition must be extremely lengthy and complex. THE AMERICAN BOY has won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger for historical mysteries. It is an award well deserved.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Edgar Allen Poe revisited, April 7, 2004

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Unpardonable Crime (Hardcover)

In Andrew Taylor's atmospheric feast, AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME, 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 the wrong class of people.

What connects these events? A school master & an American boy, Edgar Allen (Poe), brought to England by his foster father & sent to a boarding school in the sleepy village of Stoke Newington.

It is 1819 - Britain & America have at last quit fighting. The Regency Period is in high swing & the traffic of people & money between the countries is flowing fast. Into this new world where social classes are re-forming, a young teacher & the boys in his care, boys who could almost be twins, are drawn into a maelstrom of intrigue, murder & love.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME for those who relish historical fiction, based on journals & research. It will be right up your cobblestoned alley.