The American Boy. Andrew Taylor

       Copyright

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2003

      This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

      Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2003

      Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

      Cover illustration © Andrew Davidson/The Artworks

      Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008300753

      Ebook Edition © December 2012 ISBN: 9780007380985

      Version: 2018-09-25

       Praise for The American Boy:

      ‘An enticing work of fiction … Taylor takes account of both a Georgian formality and a pre-Victorian laxity in social and sexual matters; he is adept at historical recreation, and allows a heady décor to work in his favour by having his mysteries come wrapped around by a creepy London fog or embedded picturesquely in a Gloucestershire snowdrift’

       TLS

      ‘Possibly the best book of the decade is Andrew Taylor’s historical masterpiece, The American Boy. A truly captivating novel, rich with the sounds, smells, and cadences of nineteenth-century England’

       Glasgow Herald

      ‘Long, sumptuous, near-edible account of Regency rogues – wicked bankers, City swindlers, crooked pedagogues and ladies on the make – all joined in the pursuit of the rich, full, sometimes shady life. A plot stuffed with incident and character, with period details impeccably rendered’

       Literary Review

      ‘Taylor spins a magnificent tangential web … The book is full of sharply etched details evoking Dickensian London and is also a love story, shot through with the pain of a penniless and despised lover. This novel has the literary values which should take it to the top of the lists’

       Scotland on Sunday

      ‘It is as if Taylor has used the great master of the bizarre as both starting-and finishing-point, but in between created a period piece with its own unique voice. The result should satisfy those drawn to the fictions of the nineteenth century, or Poe, or indeed to crime writing at its most creative’

       Spectator

      ‘Andrew Taylor has flawlessly created the atmosphere of late-Regency London in The American Boy, with a cast of sharply observed characters in this dark tale of murder and embezzlement’

       Sunday Telegraph

      ‘Madness, murder, misapplied money and macabre marriages are interspersed with coffins, corpses and cancelled codicils … an enjoyable and well-constructed puzzle’

       Sunday Times

       Dedication

       For Sarah and William.

       And, as always, for Caroline.

       Epigraph

      I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody

      a record of my later years of unspeakable

      misery, and unpardonable crime.

      From ‘William Wilson’ by Edgar Allan Poe