Fireside Gothic by Andrew Taylor - review

Fireside Gothic, recently published by Harper Collins, is a hardback collection of three novellas by Andrew Taylor. Andrew is one of those writers of my generation (Ann Cleeves and Peter Robinson among the others) whose books originally attracted my attention when I was hoping to get a novel published. I wanted to see what newish authors of roughly my vintage were up to. Like Ann and Peter, and indeed before them, Andrew was writing books that I not only admired, but more importantly enjoyed. And like them, he's gone on to become one of our leading crime novelists.

He's also someone who writes excellent short stories (do please check out his contribution to Motives for Murder, the brilliantly titled and very entertaining "The False Inspector Lovesey"). The three longish stories in Fireside Gothic originally appeared as Kindle Singles. It interests me that a leading writer should try this different, and enterprising, way of publishing material that's some way removed from his current novels, and it strikes me as a very good idea. But I'm glad it's now possible to read these stories in a single, elegantly produced volume.

The book offers a reminder of Andrew's versatility. He's probably best known for his historical crime fiction, and for his willingness to tackle a wide range of different historical periods, but his contemporary work is also very varied, and that is a real strength, My favourites of his books are The Roth Trilogy aka Fallen Angel, The Barred Window, and Bleeding Heart Square, but there are plenty of other good ones to try if you are new to his work  not least the Lydmouth series set in a post-war market town. He even wrote five Bergerac tie-ins under a pen-name.

In Fireside Gothic he ventures into what I'd call Robert Aickman territory (and I've written several times here of my enthusiasm for Aickman; I've even produced one story of that type myself, "Through the Mist", which appeared in Starlings). Andrew's strange stories have some linking themes, but are quite distinct from each other. "Broken Voices", a Christmas story with a historical background, is closest to the classic type of supernatural story told by M. R. James. "The Leper House" benefits from an evocative setting in East Anglia, while "The Scratch" is perhaps my favourite of the three,given the number of levels on which you can interpret it. All in all, first-rate fireside reading.

Andrew Taylor's Diamond Dagger

The public announcement that Andrew Taylor has been awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger came after I'd written my post yesterday about the televised version of his extraordinary Roth Trilogy, but it was the happiest of coincidences.

The Diamond Dagger is awarded for a crime writing career of 'sustained excellence', and nobody can doubt that Andrew's track record demonstrates just that. I've followed his career since its beginnings, with the fascinating and quirky series about William Dougal, and when I became editor of the CWA's anthology, I was delighted when Andrew came up with the first short story featuring Dougal. 'The Cost of Living' appeared in Perfectly Criminal in 1996, and I said in introducing it that the story 'has all the strengths of the Dougal novels: a neat yet unusual story-line, convincing characterisation and that poignancy which is so characteristic of Taylor's writing'.

The same features were evident in his excellent Lydmouth series, and again Andrew honoured me with the first Lydmouth short story, 'The Woman who Loved Elizabeth David', which appeared in Past Crimes in 1998. Several of Andrew's stand-alone novels are quite outstanding. The American Boy won massive sales after it became a Richard and Judy selection, but one of my favourites is the less well-known, but brilliant The Barred Window. And I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm a huge fan of Bleeding Heart Square.

I read Andrew Taylor for pleasure, but in reading the books, I also learn more about the craft of crime fiction from a writer who is not only a consummate professional (a bit of trivia is that, years ago, he wrote a number of tv novelisations under a pseudonym), but whose literary gifts are subtle and original. A star of the genre, who will be a very popular Diamond Dagger winner indeed.