The Lover of the Grave

by Andrew Taylor

Book Overview

After the coldest night of the year, they find the man's body. He is dangling from the Hanging Tree on the outskirts of a village near Lydmouth, with his trousers round his ankles. Is it suicide,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312155735
• ISBN13: 9780312155735
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

best of the 1st 3 Village mysteries

This is the 3rd book in Taylor's Lydmouth Village mysteries (the 1st was An Air that Kills & the 2nd was The Mortal Sickness (A Lydmouth Mystery)). They are somewhat similar to his Roth trilogy--set in a small town in England--but have a somewhat different feel to them. While the setting is pretty dreary (esp. since this one's in the dead of Winter), they are, perhaps, not as dark as the Roth series. I liked this one best of the 1st 3 in the series and better than the Roth books as well. However, in this book, the romantic tension between the two main characters, Inspector Thornhill & Jill Francis, becomes more intense & more explicit than in the 2 prior books. Also, the mysteries are intertwined and clever. It's pretty slow going until the dramatic end, which is not only surprising, but also leans towards the next book--to see what happens to the two of them. It's well-written as usual, but with more observant/interesting turns of phrase such as: p. 300: "Jordan wa not a stupid man but, as with so many self-centered people, egoism obscured his view as effectively as a pair of blinkers." But, it's still not in a class with Taylor's terrific masterpieces: Caroline Minuscule and An Unpardonable Crime IMHO.