Andrew Taylor (born 14 October 1951) is a British author best known for his crime and historical novels, which include the Lydmouth series, the Roth Trilogy and historical novels such as the number-one best-selling The American Boy and The Ashes of London. His accolades include the Diamond Dagger, Britain's top crime-writing award.
His first novel, Caroline Minuscule (1982), won the John Creasey Memorial Award of the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain. He is the only author to have won the CWA's Historical Dagger three times, with The Office of the Dead, The American Boy and The Scent of Death. He has also won the Cartier Diamond Dagger,[2] for sustained excellence in crime writing and has been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger, the Theakston's Old Peculiar (twice), and the Edgar award. Bleeding Heart Square won Sweden's Martin Beck Award, the Golden Crowbar, in 2009. The King's Evil won the Gold Crown for the best historical novel of the year.[3] He was inducted into The Detection Club in 1995.
The American Boy, a gothic mystery linked to Edgar Allan Poe's boyhood years in England, was one of the ten titles featured in Channel 4's Richard and Judy Book Club 2005 and was also selected for The Times Top Ten Crime Novels of the Decade.
The Roth Trilogy (now also available in an omnibus edition as Requiem for an Angel) was shown on ITV in March 2007. It was a three-part drama series under the title of Fallen Angel, starring Charles Dance and Emilia Fox. The series was broadcast on three consecutive nights, beginning 11 March 2007.
His most recent books are historical novels as well as crime fiction. They explore different historical eras: Bleeding Heart Square, is set in the 1930s mainly in London (2008); The Anatomy of Ghosts (2010), set in eighteenth-century Cambridge; The Scent of Death, set in British New York, 1778–80; and its sequel, The Silent Boy (2014), during the French Revolution.
The Ashes of London (2016) is set during and just after the Great Fire of 1666. It is the first of a series set in Restoration England. The paperback edition was made Waterstone's thriller of the month for two consecutive months through January and February 2017 and was the number one bestseller for eight weeks in The Times/Waterstones chart. In 2018 he published a sequel- The Fire Court, and the third of the series, The King's Evil, was released in March 2019. The series continued with The Last Protector (2020), The Royal Secret (2021) and The Shadows of London (2023).
Andrew Taylor has also written a number of novellas with ghostly or other-worldly themes, originally as Kindle Singles. Three have been collected under the title Fireside Gothic (2016).
He has reviewed in many publications, in particular the Spectator[4] (whose crime fiction reviewer he was for ten years) and The Times.[5] He has also written short stories and articles on crime fiction. He has contributed the Grub Street column to The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors 2003-21.[6] He edited The Author 2004-06.[7] He has also taught fiction courses for the Arvon Foundation[8] and elsewhere.
He is married with two children. He and his family have lived for many years in Coleford in the Forest of Dean on the borders of England and Wales.
