The Scent of Death: Free Sampler

Discover the Best Historical Crime Novel of 2013 (Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Award) with this FREE 100 page extract from the No. 1 bestselling author of THE AMERICAN BOY. 'Andrew Taylor's historical crime fiction is always an event,' Guardian.

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. . .