Synopses & Reviews
Living in the British city of Rosington of the 1950's, Wendy
finds herself penniless, jobless and on the brink of divorce. Desperate for
advice, she seeks solace in her oldest friend, Janet Byfield. The wife of an
ambitious young clergyman, her friend seems to have everything Wendy lacks:
a loving, new family and a gorgeous manor.
But perfection has always loomed too close to tragedy. Gradually the
Byfields' idyll sours-old sins come to haunt the present and breed new ones
in their place. A shadow of death seeps through the manor, and with it comes
a mystery stretching back to the turn-of-the-century church and an
opium-addicted poet-priest, then even further back in time, to a woman
burned at the stake in the fifteenth century.
Only Wendy, as an outsider, can glimpse the truth. But can she grasp its
macabre and twisted logic in time to prevent imminent tragedy?
Office of the Dead is the final volume of a trilogy tracing the
psychological development of a female serial killer.
Synopsis
Tracing the psychological development of a female serial killer, Taylor's Roth Trilogy moves to a cathedral city in the 1950s to explore disturbing links between past and present. What can a woman who was burned at the stake in the 15th century -- or a scandalous minister from the 1890s -- have to do with murders now?
About the Author
Andrew Taylor, whose crime novels have earned a John Creasey
Award and an Edgar Award nomination, lives in England with his wife and
children. His previous novels include The Four Last Things and The
Judgement of Strangers, which are the first two installments of the
trilogy ending with Office of the Dead.