Ghosts from the past

Listing page content here

Andrew Taylor has written on a wide range of subjects, but it is for his crime thrillers that he has become famous and won so many awards. By my estimate he’s written 26, which is just under half of the 59 books he’s credited with by Amazon. Until now I have only read one of these and it was excellent. The American Boy is a long, gripping mystery novel of the kind that Wilkie Collins invented to delight the Victorians, and so I looked forward to Taylor’s new one, A Stain on the Silence.

When James’s phone rings and he hears a tiny voice say ‘Jamie’ he would have been wise to have rung off immediately. Only Lily Murthington has ever called him that and she had almost ruined his life. Now she’s dying and wants to see him. Is that why he goes? To say his farewells? Or is it the tempting pull of the dangerous past he once thought glamorous and now feels is safe to revisit? He should have known better. Lily, even at death’s door, brings the past back alive and kicking to damage him as much as ever. She tells him that he is the father of Kate, her daughter, and he will soon get a visit from her as she’s in trouble. Also, she reminds him of the serious crime he once committed which the police are still investigating.

James’s involvement had not been only with Lily but with her family. He’d been at school with her stepson, Carlo, even then a bullying monster, who took him home for the holidays as James had globe-trotting parents and no real place to go. The Murthingtons proved an exciting substitute.