Naked to the Hangman

Lydmouth #8

by Andrew Taylor

As a young police officer in Palestine during the closing months of the Mandate -- the cradle of Middle Eastern terrorism -- Richard Thornhill saw and did things which still haunt his dreams and make him fear for his sanity. Is he himself a killer?

Now, when a retired police officer is found dead in the ruins of Lydmouth Castle, the past has come back to claim Detective Inspector Thornhill, and he is under suspicion of another murder. His wife Edith and former lover Jill Francis join forces in an uneasy alliance to try to help him.

But there are many complications -- scandalous allegations have been made about Miss Awre's School of Dancing; the Ruispidge Charity's annual dance for young people is under threat; teenagers haunt the newly opened Italian coffee bar and yearn for fumbled intimacies in the sheltering darkness of the Rex Cinema; an Oxford don is looking for love; the Angel of Death wears khaki shorts and drives a Ford van. And the Spring floods are rising higher than they have in living memory, drowning a multitude of secrets ...

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Crime, Historical

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Andrew 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).

Reviews

[Rod Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review really of the whole Lydmouth series. First of all Mr Taylor's creation of characters is inspired. Not only do they seem real but he manages to create people whose thinking is human normal, we know what they are thinking, because the author tells us but we know that's exactly how that character would think.

His style is easily readable, I went through all volumes of the Lydmouth series in a matter of days and never thought I wanted to read anything else. His sense of humour is good, particularly his use of seemingly bizarre similes which are nevertheless apt.

His creation of Lydmouth is excellent. I know the town that must have inspired his creation, names like Chepstow Road and the Bathurst Arms give it away even if the name itself doesn't. Yet it's not that town, the geography's wrong but nevertheless the spirit of that town in the 1950's is evoked, in fact the spirit of every small town in the '50's . I kept expecting to see the gossiping elderly ladies of my Great Aunt's sewing class!

All in all an enjoyable read for those who like detective fiction, or even for those with a wistful view of 1950's Middle England.

[Moravian1297 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Lydmouth series really has been a mixed bag. With the last in the series, Naked to the Hangman (NTTH), unfortunately being the worst of the lot. I particularly struggled to get it finished and every time I had to pick it up, I experienced what can only be described as a fit of melancholy.
It really was tiresome, tedious and extremely boring. It was unbelievably, worse than book one, An Air That Kills (AATK), a feat I'd have thought, was nigh on impossible, but no, it wasn't and NTTH is proof aplenty that things can sometimes get much worse than you thought was humanly possible.

So, book one (AATK) in the Lydmouth series wasn't great, but things thankfully and surprisingly really did pick up somewhat in book two (The Mortal Sickness), then books three (The Lover of the Grave) and four (The Suffocating Night), were absolutely terrific, truly a joy to behold, a consummate pleasure to peruse! Oh joy of joys! Bring me more and more Lydmouth please! But no, unfortunately we then had the soap operas of books five (Where Roses Fade), and six (Death's Own Door), where we were brought crashing back down to earth with the resounding squelch of over blown, smoochie, romantic fluff. Then we were curiously led into a false dawn with book seven (Call the Dying), which momentarily lifted our hopes and spirits, with much hilarity, but then we had them hopelessly crushed and dashed against the rocks by the utter tedium of the Lydmouth grand finale, book eight (NTTH)! Which was so boring, I longed for the days of watching paint dry and tatties boil! Jeezo! It seriously had me losing the will to live. Wail! Moan! Groan! Howl!!

I'll admit, I was indeed, a tad disappointed on reading the more detailed synopsis on the back of the book, than the one I had seen previously, that the murdered ex police chief in this story wasn't the highly egregious, retired Lydmouth Detective Superintendent, Raymond Williamson.
Nevertheless, it did mention that the murdered ex police was someone from DCI Richard Thornhill's past, from when he'd been on secondment in Palestine, just before the creation of the terrorist state of Israel by the British and just after the war (WWII) in the late 1940's.
“Ooh! Excellent!" I thought, nice and topical, bring it on!
But no, honestly, this element of the narrative, ’the murder’ and Palestine, although I take it, was meant to be the main crux of the book's story, it was literally just an aside, for the book totally concentrated on a feckin' teenage romance and a teenager's dance! I kid you not, the tale would periodically skip into the murder sections, and have a page or two of flashbacks to DCI Thornhill’s time in Palestine, once in a blue moon, but for the most part we had the teenage angst from Walter Raven and his belle Gina Merini! Mind numbingly boring, ultra tedious and excruciatingly mundane!
It was bad enough having the lovey dovey stuff from the two main characters, Jill Frances and DCI Richard Thornhill in previous books, but this guff was really taking the p*ss!

Speaking of the tiresomely mundane and the gruelling boredom, we also had a chapter where Edith Thornhill went shopping for a pair of gloves! Then to add insult to injury, there were a good few chapters where the narrative was told from the POV of two preteen children, Elizabeth Thornhill and her friend Gwen Raven, while they were playing 'detectives'! It really, really was becoming quite unbearable! With the tedium rocketing into the stratosphere....... "Please! Please! Can someone take this book away and burn it?! Please?!!" You heard my cry! Where are all the Puritans & Nazis when you need ‘em, eh?! (See my review of Michael Braddick’s, ‘God’s Fury, England’s Fire’!)
I swear to you, this was the level that this book was operating on, you literally couldn't make it up, (actually you can, because the author did, ed.), as to just how agonizingly boring this Andrew Taylor effort was!
It's completely understandable why the Lydmouth series ended here, the author had obviously and rather thoroughly ran out of ideas and I would remain comprehensively unshocked, if someone told me, that after writing this novel, Andrew Taylor, like the guitar player of that prog. rock band, can't remember their name, who, during the drummer's live on stage solo, had died of boredom.




A complete and utter snoozefest! And ultimately, a load of old bollocks.

[Alan Swift · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly disappointing end to the series (if it is indeed the last Lydmouth novel )I didn't really recognise Richard in this instalment. I'm not sure that the backstory and his behaviour ran true to the character we had seen develop over the previous 7 stories. Likewise his wife Edith is a very different woman to the one portrayed in the early books. The relationship between Richard and Jill had truly got frosty and again I wondered if this felt completely right. People do change over time but all three characters felt too different. The crime element was a bit contrived and the stolen purse and the reaction of the key folk seemed exaggerated even for the times. Not his strongest novel and maybe the author has got tired of the series and the tailing off in this part led him to move on to new material.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

And now to the eighth and final (for now) book in the series set in small town 1950s England featuring DCI Richard Thornhill and newspaper editor Jill Francis.

Richard's past as a policeman in Palestine has come back to haunt him. His former boss Jock has arrived in Lydmouth to warn Richard that a young man they knew back then is in England, hell-bent on revenge for the deaths of his family. Richard has been instructed to take several weeks of leave by his superior officer as everyone is worried (as we would say nowadays) about his mental health.

Lydmouth is moving (slowly) with the times and its first coffee shop has opened, managed by a cockney-Italian woman Mrs Merini and her teenage daughter Gina.

Meanwhile the dance school is preparing for the Annual Ruispidge Charity Dance, with much consternation as young Walter Raven was promised to young Emily Brown but would now like to escort Gina Merini who he has been making cow eyes at in the café every day. Emily Brown's purse has gone missing and her mother is convinced Gina is responsible, touting her opinions around the local newspaper and the police station, but Edith Thornhill isn't so sure, she saw the woman who accompanies the dancers on the piano (Miss Buckholt) loitering around the coats at the time the purse is alleged to have gone missing.

Richard's second child, Elizabeth, is friends with Walter's sister Gwen and the two of them are often to be found playing detectives, tailing people around Lydmouth and looking for clues. Richard's wife Edith is coming into her own now the children are slightly older, her former training as a teacher and being the mother of three children has equipped her for managing people, children and committees. However, despite Edith now being far more like the interesting, accomplished woman that Jill is (and despite Edith and Jill developing a sort of friendship), Richard seems just as unhappy as ever, but just unwilling to do anything about it.

This felt like the series had run out of steam (and perhaps should have stopped wen Jill decided to return to London at the end of book six). What I enjoyed about the earlier books was the interactions between Richard and Jill as they each brought their skills to solving the crimes. That has gone and now the two circle each other but never really touch base. Also, another thing I liked about the earlier books was the ongoing development of the relationships with the minor characters who didn't just appear in one book never to be seen again. However, in the last two books I have felt much more that new characters are introduced purely for the plot (or as Jill's potential love interest) and then dropped immediately afterwards. What's happened to Charlotte and Bernard - they were two larger than life characters who have disappeared almost completely (its like when characters from the soap opera Neighbours move to Sydney as a euphemism for leaving the show).

As noted in my review of the seventh book, there are a lot of very obvious typos and spelling mistakes which should have been picked up - galling to pay full price for a book that hasn't been properly edited. In one instance where there is an issue around whether a shoe is on the left foot or the right foot of a murder victim it says there are shoes on both feet in the crime scene photo!

Wrapping up this series, I also think that Andrew Taylor's Marwood and Lovett series may be going in a similar direction, he's got them together/in love and doesn't know what to do with them so he has fabricated a talking-at-cross-purposes disagreement to hold off progressing the relationship.

[Elizabeth Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

The undercurrents in the small town of Lydmouth during the 1950s provide plenty for the gossips but also a perfect platform for crime and resentment. On this occasion we cannot rely on Detective Inspector Richard Thornhill to resolve the murder since he could be the perpetrator. We must rely on two women who hold him dear, his wife, Edith and his former lover, Jill Francis. Jill is editor of the local paper with many useful contacts while Edith has the friendship of loyalty of her husband’s police colleagues.

I enjoyed following the exploits of Edith’s daughter, Elizabeth, and her friend, Grace Raven, as they explored the village, getting into dangerous scrapes as children did in the 1950s. The developing relationship between Grace’s aunt, Beatrice and the dance teacher, Virginia Awre, is dealt with, sensitively and there is an interesting possibility for Jill Francis to find happiness again.

Richard’s experiences in Palestine in the past are much more distressing, though historically accurate. The arrival of his former military superior brings back terrible memories, and he fears there can be no good conclusion. Meanwhile teenager, Gina Merini, has arrived in town, playing with the affections of the young men in Lydmouth.

Sadly, this is the last in the series but there is an intriguing solution to the murder mystery and life for the main characters we readers have come to know well, seems mapped out clearly.

[Anne Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to keep reading until I had caught up with Andrew Taylor’s Lydmouth Mysteries series; Naked to the Hangman is the eighth and the latest book. I hope there will be more.

Detective Inspector Richard Thornhill’s past has come back to haunt him. Thornhill did not take part in the Second World War as he was in a reserved occupation as a policeman. After the war, he was given the chance to go to Palestine, ostensibly to teach modern policing methods to the chaps out there. When he arrived in Palestine, he discovered it was another world where his new police methods had no place. The Europeans, the Jews and the Arabs were in an uneasy relationship of shifting sands. Jock, Thornhill’s superior officer in Palestine, appeared to be the best man to acclimatise and guide Thornhill, or Ricky as Jock insisted on calling him. It turned out that nothing could have been further from the truth. Thornhill returned early from his secondment with a guilty secret and has spent years putting the past behind him.Then Jock turns up, as usual demanding things of Thornhill that he doesn’t want to give. Will history repeat itself or can it be laid to rest?

[Chrystyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naked to the Hangman by Andrew Taylor - Good

The last of the Lydmouth mysteries sees the past come back to haunt Detective Chief Inspector Richard Thornhill. To be honest, he's hardly in this one. Instead the plot revolves around his wife and children and the people they interact with along with other Police Officers.

Richard has been acting strangely, haggard and tired. Edith, his wife, has a quiet word with his boss's wife and the next day he's told to take a few weeks leave.

In Lydmouth itself, everyone is excited for the annual charity dance. Various young people are taking dancing lessons and there's all the traumas of who is going to ask who to the dance. Unfortunately, the weather is not helping. Constant rain leads to flooding and then.... a body is found in the water.

This series was always more about the place and people than the individuals and especially in this one. A fitting end to the series....although I can see scope for more should the author ever want to return.

#review

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title made me think this was about a gay man, but it doesn't seem so. I understand it's historical, but I don't know when it's set. This is part of a series and I have not read any of the others. More dating is needed. Could be any time from the end of WW2 to 1999. A separate series of pieces gets installed from time to time, these are set in the Middle East and get in the way of the British crime story. Plus which we have no way to know how long previously they occurred.
During heavy rain in the rural area, a body is found in a ditch, and it seems to have been treated with violence.
There are long and quite boring sections about school, good behaviour for young girls and what the world is coming to. Life was not very interesting and was carried on rigidly.
Not really for me but anyone following the series may like it better.

[Wide Eyes, Big Ears! · Rating 4 out of 5]

CI Richard Thornhill’s past has reared its ugly, dangerous head and he’s not coping. His time spent in Palestine after the war was brutal and compromising. Now two of the combatants have surfaced in Lydmouth. Hmmm, for a series finale this was a pretty unhappy story. I sort of knew I wouldn’t get my wish for some of the main characters despite the nice bow at the end. It’s been a strong but melancholy series with great insights into the pettiness and contradictory nature of people, and the multifaceted mysteries surrounding each murder have made them all intriguing stories. I’ve also enjoyed the thoughtful social exploration of class and poverty, women’s rights, and sexuality. I hope I come across audio narrator Philip Franks again, he really has been excellent.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title was dramatic but on the whole this was the least exciting book of the series -- it read more like a portrait of small town England after WWII and much time was spent on the interactions of the various inhabitants, like the woman running the dance class, the fifteen year old experiencing lust for the girl in the cafe, and on and on. It did wrap up the story of Richard and Jill (they definitely do not end up together and Richard stays with his boring wife.). But on the whole, I liked the series and Andrew Taylor is always good.

[susan hinds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow start

Over the course of a week I have read all the series this series of 8 books. That should tell you that you really will enjoy the series. This last book seemed tedious at first: it skipped around from Palestine to Lydmouth, dotted in odd quotes and frustrated the reader to the point of tedium. However, it all came together as the characters unfolded, to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion.......making me wonder if/when the next book will arrive??

[Carol Beckman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complicated but got there in the end

The death investigation sometimes seemed to take second place to the ladies of Lydmouth and their children and it all got pretty confusing. All came together in the end with a finale to end the series.
I read the whole series and each story was very different and the major characters developed, but I won't miss the dreariness of 1950s Lydmouth! It was true to my memories of the time, but it didn't rain quite as much as in Lydmouth!

[Ian Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sorry to be leaving Lydmouth now that the final book has been completed. It's an expertly created world, giving a real insight into post-war Britain. I found myself wondering whether it was likely that the Palestine history would have come out now when there's been no mention of it at all earlier in the series, but I guess it's perfectly fine to say that people didn't talk of such things at the time. Thoroughly recommended, especially the audio book.

[Kenn Coates]

Naked to the Hangman

Please tell me this isn't the end? I absolutely loved getting to know these characters through the series of Lydmouth Crime stories; they are so well written and decided that - even if you've pretty much worked out what is happening - you still can't wait to reach the end, at the same time as dreading the last page.

[E.L.Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Palestine

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all these books they were very well written and had a very good story line, but I now feel bereft now there are no more left to read I could read just another couple untill Thornhill retires maybe Andrew Taylor could write 2 more.

[WendyRG · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most boring mysteries I have ever read. The only reason I finished it was to add it to my list for this year. Probably a bad reason.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve really quite enjoyed this Lydmouth series. Perhaps a little on the tame side (as you’d expect given the period they are written about).

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t mind this series but I do find the triangle of Thornhill, his wife and lover is getting a little tedious. There is no humour in these books, a bit dour

[Tim Wickens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could not get into. It was rather twee

[Windy · Rating 4 out of 5]

We learn quite a bit about Thornhill's past which makes the story a bit long winded. It was a satisfactory conclusion to the series though.

[Susy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the last book published in the Lydmouth series, and I completely forgot to buy it until the author newsletter reminded me. In these books we see the growth of the people in the town, how their lives take different paths, how their relationships make complicated figures as in a minuet. Two time frames grab our interest here: the time of the end of the British Mandate in Palestine, and the “present” of the series, the middle Fifties. Thornhill´s past as a young policeman helping to maintain peace in Palestine –a peace that was never attained, as the problems these days show us- comes in the figure of a crooked mate of the old times. We visit the known characters: his family, mainly Edith and the middle daughter, restless Elizabeth, Jill, Sgt. Kirby, and other citizens of the town, as Beatrice, Patrick and Miss Awre. The mystery, with the murder of Richard´s former fellow officer, is sound but to me it was the background. What I love in these series is the tapestry of the town life. Nobody was protagonist here, just Lydmouth with the continuous rain and the threat of floods. A chorus keep the plot lively: Jock, Gina Merini, Drake, and the ghostly figures of the living Leo and the dead Rachel. Taylor never disappoints, his books are excellent and the interest is in life in Lydmouth, though the mystery element is well done and the suspense an important part of our satisfaction when finishing the novels. . I hope Lydmouth continues advancing in time, I envision Thornhill’s daughter as a CID Inspector in the 80s.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the eighth and to date the last of the Lydmouth crime novels. Like all of them it has a well planned and twisty "whodunnit" plot, combined with plot strands that centre on the relationships between different characters, notably Jill the journalist and Richard the detective inspector.

The best thing about the series is the way it depicts the world of 1950s Britain; that long ago far away place that is still within living memory, a place where almost everyone smokes, drinking and driving is normal practice, women usually give up their jobs on marriage, and the stiff upper lip rules. In this particular book there are also glimpses of the British mandate forces in Palestine, which gives it a rather different feel from the earlier books. It's darker and more scary, as someone from Richard's past turns up, and they aren't just being friendly.

[Wendy Percival · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read and, as ever, I enjoyed being transported back to 1950s Lydmouth.

The story's told at a gentle pace and is smoothly written, the wonderfully old fashioned characters nicely convincing.

The blurb was slightly hyped, I felt, suggesting it was some sort of 'Race Against Time' to save Richard Thornhill from a false accusation of murder when, in fact, it was much more subtle than that.

The story is written much less in the POV of Inspector Thornhill than others I've read and perhaps he wasn't sufficiently centre-stage as might be expected.

However it's still a well told story and I look forward to the other Lydmouth books that I haven't yet read.

[Kirsty Darbyshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book caught me at the end of a long run of non stop reading when my attention was wandering away to other things, and it took me a while to get into it.

I like the fact that this series is continuing and growing, changing direction as the characters change. This book also delves into Richard Thornhill's past dealing with his time with the Palestinian police after the Second World War. This was the bit that caused my mind to wander the most though, I didn't quite get to grips with the cast of the back story.

On the whole a pretty good read though.

[Keith Currie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite liked this, not having read any of the others in the series. The picture of 1950s provincial English life was convincing in all its drab conformity and the story was a pleasant way to pass a few hours. I liked the scenes set in Palestine and also the reconciliation between the protagonists at the end.

[Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly disappointing end to the Lydmouth series. Thornhill was unrecognisable and almost relegated to a bit-part as his past caught up with him. Lydmouth and it's characters remained convincing however and in general a good read. Maybe time for something else now ...

[Denis Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most recent -- and most unique -- of the Lydmouth Series. This volume explores Richard Thornhill's experiences in the Palestine Mandat at the waning of British control.

[Joanne Harding]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11361804

[Anita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Waiting waiting waiting for something to happen. For something exciting or peak my interest. Something worth trying to solve. This "murder mystery" set in a wet English village was.... well... wet.

[Les Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book, with an excellent ending.