The Scent of Death

By Andrew Taylor

*WINNER of the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award 2013*
‘Andrew Taylor wrote superb historical fiction long before Hilary Mantel was popular’ Daily Telegraph
From the No.1 bestselling author of THE AMERICAN BOY comes a new historical thriller set during the American War of Independence.

August, 1778. British-controlled Manhattan is a melting pot of soldiers, traitors and refugees, surrounded by rebel forces as the American War of Independence rages on.

Into this simmering tension sails Edward Savill, a London clerk tasked with assessing the claims of loyalists who have lost out during the war.

Savill lodges with the ageing Judge Wintour, his ailing wife, and their enigmatic daughter-in-law Arabella. However, as Savill soon learns, what the Wintours have lost in wealth, they have gained in secrets.

The murder of a gentleman in the slums pulls Savill into the city’s underbelly. But when life is so cheap, why does one death matter? Because making a nation is a lucrative business, and some people cannot afford to miss out, whatever the price…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007493074

Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of crime novels, including the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama Fallen Angel, and the historical crime novels The Ashes of London, The Silent Boy, and The American Boy, a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club Choice. He has won many awards, including the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger.

Reviews for The Scent of Death

[johnwbeha · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a fan of Andrew Taylor!
His books belong to that sub-genre known as literary thrillers and should appeal to both thriller and historical fiction readers.
He seems to be able to write in a style suited to the period he is writing about; here it is New York during the (American) War of Independence. He combines a well structured plot with lots of interesting background detail.
I heartily recommend this book and if you follow my advice you will go back to his earlier books as well.

[jpporter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This excellent book takes place in 1778 in New York, shortly after the British had reclaimed possession of the city. The plot involves a series of murders surrounding a British Loyalist family and the arrival of a new clerk to the American Department of the British government. The story follows the clerk (Edward Savill) as events occur. Andrew Taylor has a fine knack for blending his writing style with the period of the historical fiction he's developing. We get an excellent picture of life during the Revolutionary War from the British perspective, as well as an excellent picture of British life at the time.Taylor has become one of my favorite authors. He has an excellent sense of pacing a story, and a fine sense of detail - he knows how much needs to be said at a given point to keep the reader involved without any feeling of being left in the dark or of being bored .Many of Taylor's books are hard to come by, as they are published in England, and not often in the U.S. They can be found through book dealers in Canada, however, at a fair price. Another story involving Savill is due to be published in the U.S. later this year - The Silent Boy. I am eager to read it.

[nancyno5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I won this book from GoodReads First Reads giveaways in exchange for an honest review.I have not read any of Andrew Taylor's other works so I have nothing to compare this novel to. I wish I did, because unfortunately as for this book I found it to be slow, with weak characterizations and a somewhat confusing plot. The protagonist is supposed to be an English Civil Servant who "is sent from London to deal with claims by Loyalists who have lost property during the fighting" and somehow ends up investigating a murder. With predictable twists and a ponderous pace, I just could not get in to the novel. I felt no chemistry between any of the characters, least of all between the two protagonist Arabella and Edward. I felt like the author picked a bunch of ideas out of a hat and then tried to tie them all together.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To set the scene,the year is 1778 and the place is Manhattan,which is controlled by the British.Arriving here is Edward Savill who is taking up a minor position in the 'American Department'.He lodges with the Wintour family with whom he becomes friendly.Soon he becomes embroiled in a series of murders which seems to involve American rebels,slaves and members of upper-class families too.In his quest to discover the truth,he finds himself in a series of dangerous situations in which he is bludgeoned,slashed and generally beaten.Taylor is a fine writer who is at his best in this wonderful book which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in American history and/or crime fiction.

[ronrose1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author artfully mixes historical fact and fiction with a tantalizing tale of mystery. New York is a city in virtual captivity in late 1778. Although the British hold the streets for the crown, the city is surrounded by American rebel troops. Gangs of marauders roam a veritable no man’s land between the two armies. Edward Savill, a clerk for the British government’s, American Department based in London, is thrust into this swarming hive of soldiers, local citizens, and refugees from the surrounding countryside. He is tasked with recording the claims of depredation perpetrated against these loyal colonists by the rebels. Many have lost all their property and possessions to these rabble in the name of Congress and the revolution. Savill soon becomes embroiled with the family who has given him room and board while he is in New York. The lovely, but aloof Mrs. Arabella is a nagging reminder of the wife he has left behind months ago in England. Arabella’s long missing husband returns from fighting the rebels, yet he needs much recuperating from serious wounds he received at the front. Savill notices all is not well between the reunited couple. His natural attraction to Arabella leaves Edward with a certain distaste for her domineering husband. Shortly after a recent acquaintance of Arabella’s shows up dead, Savill is set upon by brigands. Were they out to merely to take his purse or his life? The mystery twists and turns as Savill tries to determine who is after him. Why has he, a newly arrived official from England, been targeted for death? Could Arabella’s husband want Savill out of the picture or is it a deeper mystery involving Arabella as well? Book provided for review by HarperCollins Publishers.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not sure what to make of this one. I enjoyed Andrew Taylor's The Anatomy of Ghosts, but I don't really know enough about eighteenth century America to appreciate the characters and story here. I did get a clear sense of the loyalist/rebel divide, and Taylor's attention to detail and atmosphere brought early New York to life (especially Canvas Town), but I kept mentally translating the setting into mid-Victorian England. In fact, the narrator reminded me of the self-satisfied bachelors in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and My Cousin Rachel, who underestimate the women they seek to protect. I saw the twist in 'Mrs Arabella's' tale coming a mile off, but the tangled web that Savill walked into was rather too convoluted to keep track of. Not a riveting read, but beautifully told as always by Andrew Taylor.

[passion4reading_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It is 1788 and the American War of Independence has been raging for more than three years. Edward Savill is a clerk in the American Department and has come to New York to deal with Loyalist refugees’ claims for compensation. On his first day ashore, he encounters the body of a murder victim for which a runaway slave is found guilty and hanged. Savill’s lodgings are with the Wintour family, a formerly illustrious family of a judge now fallen on hard times. In the household also lives Arabella Wintour, daughter-in-law of the judge and wife of an army captain, missing in action, and Edward Savill is in equal means mystified and attracted by her. Little does he know that soon more danger awaits him than simply getting lost in notorious Canvas Town.Hoping to learn a little more about the American War of Independence, Andrew Taylor’s fluent and colourful prose did a lot to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge, his atmospheric descriptions detailing the hardships and squalor of the people of New York, reduced to an enclave with only the sea route remaining open, and illuminating the plight of people on both sides of this civil war in all but name. To the present-day reader the inherent bigotry in the white population is painfully apparent, barely crediting the black slaves with intelligence and human emotions and making them little better than animals in the eyes of their masters. Even though the murder victim is encountered very early on, it would be too simple to just call this a historical murder mystery as there are so many more nuances to this book; solving the crime isn’t necessarily the main objective as the novel is more concerned with painting the ever more volatile political situation faced by the people of New York and with piecing together the events that eventually led to the murder. The characters, both major and minor, are well drawn, but the culprit(s) were a little bit too obvious in my opinion, and I felt that the novel was somewhat lacking in tension as a result. But sometimes the who is less important than the why and wherefore.(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.)