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Roth #1-3
Requiem for an Angel
Like an archaeological dig, The Roth Trilogy strips away the past to reveal the menace lurking in the 'Taylor has established a sound reputation for writing tense, clammy novels that perceptively penetrate the human psyche' -- Marcel Berlins, The Times The shadow of past evil hangs over the present in Andrew Taylor's Roth Trilogy as he skilfully traces the influences that have come to shape the mind of a psychopath. Beginning, in The Four Last Things, with the abduction of little Lucy Appleyard and a grisly discovery in a London graveyard, the layers of the past are gradually peeled away through The Judgement of Strangers and The Office of the Dead to unearth the dark and twisted roots of a very immediate horror that threatens to explode the serenity of Rosington's peaceful Cathedral Close.
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First published March 4, 2002
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About the author
Andrew Taylor
61 books727 followersAndrew Taylor (b. 1951) is a British author of mysteries. Born in East Anglia, he attended university at Cambridge before getting an MA in library sciences from University College London. His first novel, Caroline Miniscule (1982), a modern-day treasure hunt starring history student William Dougal, began an eight-book series and won Taylor wide critical acclaim. He has written several other thriller series, most notably the eight Lydmouthbooks, which begin with An Air That Kills (1994).
His other novels include The Office of the Dead (2000) and The American Boy (2003), both of which won the Crime Writers’ Association of Britain’s Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award, making Taylor the only author to receive the prize twice. His Roth trilogy, which has been published in omnibus form as Requiem for an Angel (2002), was adapted by the UK’s ITV for its television show Fallen Angel. Taylor’s most recent novel is the historical thriller The Scent of Death (2013).
His other novels include The Office of the Dead (2000) and The American Boy (2003), both of which won the Crime Writers’ Association of Britain’s Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award, making Taylor the only author to receive the prize twice. His Roth trilogy, which has been published in omnibus form as Requiem for an Angel (2002), was adapted by the UK’s ITV for its television show Fallen Angel. Taylor’s most recent novel is the historical thriller The Scent of Death (2013).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 23, 2012
Requiem for an Angel: The Secret History of a Murderer by Andrew Taylor is a collection of the three books that comprise the Roth Trilogy: The Four Last Things, The Judgment of Strangers, The Office of the Dead. The collection is also published under the title Fallen Angel. Although the three novels can be read separately, together they make for a very powerful novel. Each of the novels is written in a different style while it also alters the reader's perception of each story as the complete history of the serial killer is revealed.
Taylor takes a unique reverse chronology approach with this crime fiction trilogy, starting with recent events in the 1990s and going back into the past, the 1970s and 1958. Since the reader is privy to much more information than the characters, the suspense and sense of foreboding build in the narrative until almost overwhelming. While you know who the psychopath is, you will also be asking where does the responsibility for the murderer lie - nature or nurture? And does the truth lie even further buried in the past?
"The Four Last Things features the Appleyards, present-day inner-city dwellers, potentially happy, despite the vicissitudes of their opposing careers as a woman cleric and a male police officer, until their beloved child is abducted. The reader knows by whom, and into what appalling danger: the victims do not, and God is silent on the subject. In The Judgment of Strangers, when a sternly handsome and passionate priest faces the torture of a sexless and sterile marriage against the cacophonous background of the licentious 1970s, God is equally reticent. Again, there is a child, omnipresent, but often silent. In The Office of the Dead, set in 1958, an element of godlessness prevails in the character of Wendy, the narrator, guest of the Reverend Byfield and his wife and an uncomfortable adornment to the Cathedral Close. She is the sinner, taking refuge from her adulterous husband and frivolous life, inseparable from her bottle of gin and as fine an example of the decent scarlet woman as literature can provide." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg. x
"...[O]n one level, this trilogy is a history of social habits and attitudes from 1958 to the present day, giving Taylor the opportunity to evoke three successive eras with uncanny, atmospheric accuracy.... On another level, the narratives reflect the changing state of the Church of England and the altered status of its sometimes hapless clerics." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg ix
I really think that reading the three novels together makes the story more complete, as well as more horrifying and shocking. As you go back in time you see the secrets kept in the past, the mistakes made, clues that, if they had been taken seriously, could have changed recent events. Not only is each novel set in a different time period, they are also narrated by a different person. While the connection between families is explored, there is also a connection to a mad poet-priest who died fifty years before the serial killer, Angel, was born.
Requiem for an Angel, The Roth Trilogy, is Very Highly Recommended - one of the best; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
Taylor takes a unique reverse chronology approach with this crime fiction trilogy, starting with recent events in the 1990s and going back into the past, the 1970s and 1958. Since the reader is privy to much more information than the characters, the suspense and sense of foreboding build in the narrative until almost overwhelming. While you know who the psychopath is, you will also be asking where does the responsibility for the murderer lie - nature or nurture? And does the truth lie even further buried in the past?
"The Four Last Things features the Appleyards, present-day inner-city dwellers, potentially happy, despite the vicissitudes of their opposing careers as a woman cleric and a male police officer, until their beloved child is abducted. The reader knows by whom, and into what appalling danger: the victims do not, and God is silent on the subject. In The Judgment of Strangers, when a sternly handsome and passionate priest faces the torture of a sexless and sterile marriage against the cacophonous background of the licentious 1970s, God is equally reticent. Again, there is a child, omnipresent, but often silent. In The Office of the Dead, set in 1958, an element of godlessness prevails in the character of Wendy, the narrator, guest of the Reverend Byfield and his wife and an uncomfortable adornment to the Cathedral Close. She is the sinner, taking refuge from her adulterous husband and frivolous life, inseparable from her bottle of gin and as fine an example of the decent scarlet woman as literature can provide." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg. x
"...[O]n one level, this trilogy is a history of social habits and attitudes from 1958 to the present day, giving Taylor the opportunity to evoke three successive eras with uncanny, atmospheric accuracy.... On another level, the narratives reflect the changing state of the Church of England and the altered status of its sometimes hapless clerics." Frances Fyfield, foreword, pg ix
I really think that reading the three novels together makes the story more complete, as well as more horrifying and shocking. As you go back in time you see the secrets kept in the past, the mistakes made, clues that, if they had been taken seriously, could have changed recent events. Not only is each novel set in a different time period, they are also narrated by a different person. While the connection between families is explored, there is also a connection to a mad poet-priest who died fifty years before the serial killer, Angel, was born.
Requiem for an Angel, The Roth Trilogy, is Very Highly Recommended - one of the best; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
September 12, 2008
A really creepy story - good premise done backwards!!!!!
January 9, 2019
Very dreary and tabloid-ish. I struggled to finish, despite reading many of Andrew Taylor's books and enjoying all of them.
April 28, 2025
I found the first book, 'The Four Last Things' of this omnibus, ‘Requiem for an Angel’ was such a tiresome, uphill slog, that I've had to break from moving straight into the second, ’The Judgment of Strangers’, if indeed I do at all.
This is the third Andrew Taylor novel in a row that I've read, that has been pretty awful. Starting with the last book in the Lydmouth series, 'Naked to the Hangman', then 'Raven on the Water' and now this. All three, as well as being extremely boring, where the majority of the content is made up of huge swathes of tedious descriptions of mundane, work-a-day, everyday activities, there's also subject matter in the former that's excruciatingly embarrassing and in the case of the latter, there's excessively graphic and intensely uncomfortable scenes of paedophilia, pretty grim fare indeed. Nevertheless, I do love it when my stories engender strong emotions obviously, but not to the point where I want to vomit.
I absolutely loved every sentence and every word in the author's Marwood & Lovett series, and a few of his stand alones, but the rot started to set in with the afore mentioned Lydmouth series, which really was a hit or a miss, and it's reached the point where I'm now looking for patterns, to perhaps be able to weed out the more unpalatable Andrew Taylor books that will either make me die of boredom or want to gouge my eyes out with a pointy stick, ooft!
So, the main pattern seems to be, of the books I've mentioned, that the ones I've enjoyed have been set in either the seventeenth or nineteenth century and the ones of exhausting tedium, in the main, have all been set in the twentieth century. From now on then, I shall dain to avoid all work by Mr. Taylor that has a more contemporary setting and stick to the tales that have a more historical bent, which do seem to allow the author’s obvious talent to be a bit more expansive with welcome melodramatic flourish.
Right from the off, I never took to this book specifically. I didn't like the fact that the author had made the mother, Sally, of the snatched child, Lucy, a religious cleric, and it wouldn’t really have made any difference as to what religious denomination she belonged to, as It just led to long boring passages dealing with Sally Appleby's crisis of faith, and as I'm a person with absolutely zero faith in any religion, all that categorically, meant nothing to me.
I am however, a proud grandfather, with three young granddaughters, so I'm not without any feelings, as to how anyone would feel if, woe betide, a disaster like that happened. But as the events played out, the initial snatch of the child besides, very little, if anything, actually happened. You had the clerical mother, Sally, with her afore mentioned crisis of conscience and the police officer father, Michael, blaming everyone but himself, but as well as being extremely depressing all round, just wasn't very interesting, all anyone seemed to do, was make endless cups of tea! And although I could very much empathize with the anxiety of the parents (my own eldest granddaughter a few months back, had went to a friend’s house after school without telling anyone, on my watch, and for an hour or so, until we found her, the worry and anxiety was palpably through the roof!), child mortality however, is not really something I enjoy thinking about, so you better make the story worth my damn while. But all Sally seemed to focus on, was her hatred for nearly everyone, unfortunate enough to enter her orbit.
The alternate chapters featuring the kidnappers/child murderers, Eddie and Angel did give the story a boot up the arse, to begin with anyway. Especially with their dreadful back stories, in particular the tale of Eddie's father taking the girls or LV's (little visitors) down to the basement to see his doll's house and to pose for some 'photography’, which was more than uncomfortable, particularly when the toe curling descriptions of them getting undressed started! This was way too graphic, the whole scene was vomit enducing!
Anyway, even the chapters with Eddy, Angel and the kidnapped Lucy seemed to settle into descriptions of the boring routine of domestic drudgery. It wasn't until Eddie tried to escape with Lucy from Angel's clutches, that I again felt even a modicum of tension and jeopardy.
There were also several dream sequences, which really was the crowning turd on the already steaming pile, and at one point, the story confusingly threatened to turn into The Da Vinci Code! When Sally and another couple of clerics, including Michael's God Father (whom she seemed to particularly despise!) were deciphering clues and codes left by the kidnappers! Bizarre, utterly bizarre.
On a positive note to end with, I did enjoy an early scene, where an elderly woman came into the Reverend Sally Appleyard's church during Sunday congregation and started shouting abuse at her,
"She Devil, Blasphemer against Christ, Apostate!" She stated straight at her, spittle sprayed from her mouth, voice low, monotonous and cultivated, "Impious bitch, Whore of Babylon, Daughter of Satan! May God damn you and yours!"
Some excellent verbal abuse there all told. However, it does sound extreme and a bit far fetched, so believe it or not, that actually happened in a relatively local church to me a few years back. A slightly older lad than me that I was acquainted with, had went into a church one Sunday morning, during service, with a busy congregation and began pointing at the vicar and foaming at the mouth, while egregiously screaming that the cleric was a 'deceiver’, ‘a filthy lying priest' and suchlike! Unfortunately the lad had had the same name as a mate of mine, so when it made the local paper, everyone thought it was my mate that had done it haha! Folk kept asking him in the street, why had he done it? And if he was p*ssed at the time? Obviously he had to then rely on the auld ’Shaggy’ denial, ”It wasn’t me!” lol. So nae luck mate. Nae luck at all, and I certainly hope I have more luck in future choosing my Andrew Taylor novels.
This is the third Andrew Taylor novel in a row that I've read, that has been pretty awful. Starting with the last book in the Lydmouth series, 'Naked to the Hangman', then 'Raven on the Water' and now this. All three, as well as being extremely boring, where the majority of the content is made up of huge swathes of tedious descriptions of mundane, work-a-day, everyday activities, there's also subject matter in the former that's excruciatingly embarrassing and in the case of the latter, there's excessively graphic and intensely uncomfortable scenes of paedophilia, pretty grim fare indeed. Nevertheless, I do love it when my stories engender strong emotions obviously, but not to the point where I want to vomit.
I absolutely loved every sentence and every word in the author's Marwood & Lovett series, and a few of his stand alones, but the rot started to set in with the afore mentioned Lydmouth series, which really was a hit or a miss, and it's reached the point where I'm now looking for patterns, to perhaps be able to weed out the more unpalatable Andrew Taylor books that will either make me die of boredom or want to gouge my eyes out with a pointy stick, ooft!
So, the main pattern seems to be, of the books I've mentioned, that the ones I've enjoyed have been set in either the seventeenth or nineteenth century and the ones of exhausting tedium, in the main, have all been set in the twentieth century. From now on then, I shall dain to avoid all work by Mr. Taylor that has a more contemporary setting and stick to the tales that have a more historical bent, which do seem to allow the author’s obvious talent to be a bit more expansive with welcome melodramatic flourish.
Right from the off, I never took to this book specifically. I didn't like the fact that the author had made the mother, Sally, of the snatched child, Lucy, a religious cleric, and it wouldn’t really have made any difference as to what religious denomination she belonged to, as It just led to long boring passages dealing with Sally Appleby's crisis of faith, and as I'm a person with absolutely zero faith in any religion, all that categorically, meant nothing to me.
I am however, a proud grandfather, with three young granddaughters, so I'm not without any feelings, as to how anyone would feel if, woe betide, a disaster like that happened. But as the events played out, the initial snatch of the child besides, very little, if anything, actually happened. You had the clerical mother, Sally, with her afore mentioned crisis of conscience and the police officer father, Michael, blaming everyone but himself, but as well as being extremely depressing all round, just wasn't very interesting, all anyone seemed to do, was make endless cups of tea! And although I could very much empathize with the anxiety of the parents (my own eldest granddaughter a few months back, had went to a friend’s house after school without telling anyone, on my watch, and for an hour or so, until we found her, the worry and anxiety was palpably through the roof!), child mortality however, is not really something I enjoy thinking about, so you better make the story worth my damn while. But all Sally seemed to focus on, was her hatred for nearly everyone, unfortunate enough to enter her orbit.
The alternate chapters featuring the kidnappers/child murderers, Eddie and Angel did give the story a boot up the arse, to begin with anyway. Especially with their dreadful back stories, in particular the tale of Eddie's father taking the girls or LV's (little visitors) down to the basement to see his doll's house and to pose for some 'photography’, which was more than uncomfortable, particularly when the toe curling descriptions of them getting undressed started! This was way too graphic, the whole scene was vomit enducing!
Anyway, even the chapters with Eddy, Angel and the kidnapped Lucy seemed to settle into descriptions of the boring routine of domestic drudgery. It wasn't until Eddie tried to escape with Lucy from Angel's clutches, that I again felt even a modicum of tension and jeopardy.
There were also several dream sequences, which really was the crowning turd on the already steaming pile, and at one point, the story confusingly threatened to turn into The Da Vinci Code! When Sally and another couple of clerics, including Michael's God Father (whom she seemed to particularly despise!) were deciphering clues and codes left by the kidnappers! Bizarre, utterly bizarre.
On a positive note to end with, I did enjoy an early scene, where an elderly woman came into the Reverend Sally Appleyard's church during Sunday congregation and started shouting abuse at her,
"She Devil, Blasphemer against Christ, Apostate!" She stated straight at her, spittle sprayed from her mouth, voice low, monotonous and cultivated, "Impious bitch, Whore of Babylon, Daughter of Satan! May God damn you and yours!"
Some excellent verbal abuse there all told. However, it does sound extreme and a bit far fetched, so believe it or not, that actually happened in a relatively local church to me a few years back. A slightly older lad than me that I was acquainted with, had went into a church one Sunday morning, during service, with a busy congregation and began pointing at the vicar and foaming at the mouth, while egregiously screaming that the cleric was a 'deceiver’, ‘a filthy lying priest' and suchlike! Unfortunately the lad had had the same name as a mate of mine, so when it made the local paper, everyone thought it was my mate that had done it haha! Folk kept asking him in the street, why had he done it? And if he was p*ssed at the time? Obviously he had to then rely on the auld ’Shaggy’ denial, ”It wasn’t me!” lol. So nae luck mate. Nae luck at all, and I certainly hope I have more luck in future choosing my Andrew Taylor novels.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 26, 2019
Wow. Unable to put these down. You absolutely must read these in the order they were published - no cheating - to get the full effect of the twisted plot. When you are done, you might want to go back and start again just to be sure you did not miss anything.
These are extremely well-written but - yes - super creepy and not for afficionados of cozy mysteries. I really liked the first book in the trilogy, a bit meh on the second, largely because the narrator is so unpleasant, but the third book was a riveting roller coaster ride. I highly recommend this series, and I am looking forward to anything else Mr. Taylor gifts us with.
These are extremely well-written but - yes - super creepy and not for afficionados of cozy mysteries. I really liked the first book in the trilogy, a bit meh on the second, largely because the narrator is so unpleasant, but the third book was a riveting roller coaster ride. I highly recommend this series, and I am looking forward to anything else Mr. Taylor gifts us with.
June 28, 2024
Nice to have a familiar setting.
September 7, 2012
As soon as I finished this trilogy, I wanted to re-read it! I loved how each successive book cast the previous one(s) in a new light, so that I needed to reassess the actions of the main characters as I learned more of their personal histories. As well as the unfolding story that kept me reading, there were the occasional moments that prompted an unexpected smile - I shall definitely be looking for more books by the same author.
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September 12, 2011I had already read The Office of The Dead previously and thought it was a good book, but I re-read it as part of this trilogy, and it made a lot more sense reading it in this context. I found that it was a long read but the continuity made it worthwhile.
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