The Judgement of Strangers

by Andrew Taylor (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $23.76

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.25

  `Complex, with lots of sinister implications... moves the traditional crime novel on to some deeper level of exploration' Jane Jakeman, Independent

  It is 1970. David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past and a darker future, brings home a new wife to Roth. Throughout the summer, the consequences of the marriage reverberate through a village now submerged in a sprawling London suburb.

  Blinded by lust, Byfield is oblivious to the dangers that lie all about him: the menopausal churchwarden with a hopeless passion for her priest; his beautiful, neglected teenage daughter Rosemary; and the sinister presence of Frances Youlgreave - poet, opium addict and suicide - whose power stretches beyond the grave.

  Soon the murders and blasphemies begin. But does the responsibility lie in the present or the past? And can Byfield, a prisoner of his own passion, break through to the truth before the final tragedy destroys what he most cherishes?

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $4.19

  `Andrew Taylor digs deep to explore the tangled roots of sex, violence and religion. This is a fine thriller, with clues complex enough to tax a Morse.' Reginald Hill (on The Four Last Things)

  The second novel in the Roth Trilogy is the story of David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past and a darker future. Set in 1970 in a commuter village near London, the novel explores the consequences of Byfield's second marriage.

  Roth is not so much a village as a suburban state of mind. But the past clings, and still has the power to affect the present. The menopausal Audrey Oliphant, churchwarden and spinster, nurses a hopeless passion for her parish priest. Lady Youlgreave slides towards death, in the company of her equally senile dogs, Beauty and Beast. The big house, now a wreck of its former grandeur, has been sold to a pair of hippies, brother and sister, who have their own secrets and their own power to disturb. The vicar's new wife is fascinated by a Victorian poet-priest with local connections - Francis Youlgreave, author of The Judgement of Strangers; an opium addict and suicide. There are children at the Vicarage - Michael Appleyard, a watchful boy with a taste for Sherlock Holmes; and Rosemary, David's teenage daughter, as beautiful - and as strange - as an angel. Then the murders begin, and the mutilations, and the echoes of past crimes and blasphemies.