Taylor, Alison G. Books

In Guilty Night

Alison G. Taylor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On a freezing November night, 14-year-old Arwel Thomas, turns up dead in a railway tunnel outside Bangor, an apparent victim of sexual abuse and a runaway from the local children's home.

DCI Michael McKenna and his colleagues are slowly drawn in to the web of relationships and power struggles surrounding Arwel and his peers in the claustrophobic world of childcare institution, where nothing and no one can be taken at face value and ethical structures bow to expediency and greed. A world in which they find Elias ab Elis and his wife, blessed with worldly wealth, lurking in the shadows, cursed and impoverished by their own dark tragedies.

In this dark world McKenna finds families existing in a twilight of ignorance and stupidity and children consigned to the scrap-heap of life. Forced to confront his own frailties through his investigations, McKenna must probe the underbelly of this seamy culture in order to get at the truth, however destructive it may be.


From the Paperback edition.

Simeon's Bride

Alison G. Taylor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Thoroughly engrossing British mystery. 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This mystery will please fans of Elizabeth George. The main characters are fleshed out and interest you from the beginning. The plot is very absorbing and the setting in Wales only intensifies the air of "mystery" about it. I enjoyed this mystery immensely and look forward to reading more of Ms. Taylor's books and continuing to get to know DCI McKenna.

Good start to a Wales based mystery series. 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Three policemen try to unravel first the identity and then the reason for the murder of a woman found hanged near 'Gallows Cottage'.The men have an uneasy and at times bickering association. There is much of interest in the locale and characters involved. I found the book to be enjoyable and am anxious to read Mrs. Taylor's next installment. She is a good writer with strong beliefs who expresses all the petty and serious discontents faced by "Everyman".The mystery is inhabited by familiar ghosts. Mrs. Taylor observes of one character, who has left his wife and alienated most others around him that, "...he waited for Death, the only visitor likely to call." A thoughtful mystery with more than murder on its mind.

Editorial Review:

When a woman's skeleton turns up in the small Welsh hamlet of Gallows Cottage, a group of three very different policemen uncovers a two-hundred-year-old conspiracy of silence haunting the guilty and innocent alike.

Unsafe Convictions

Alison G. Taylor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

The Dark Corners of the the Human Heart 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I went to a bit of trouble to get this book. As far as I know, it has never been released in the US which is a dead shame, because Alison Taylor writes the type of hard edged detective stories that there are not enough of in the US.

First, this is not her best book. The one I enjoyed the most was Simeon's Bride.

Second, I enjoyed this book immensely.

Dominated by the scenery of the moors north of Manchester, the same scenery that supposedly inspired Ian Brady and Myra Hindley to murder, the small village of Haughton is rocked when the body of young woman is found in her burning house. Her brutally abusive ex-husband is convicted of the murder and sent to prison. Then evidence appears that does not just suggest that her husband was innocent, but which implicates the police in a frame up of the convicted man.

Michael Mckenna and his group and brought in to investigate the police who are implicated in this miscarriage of justice. But was it a miscarriage? From the reporter who is more interested in selling papers than relating the truth, to the town's reformed bad girl who just wants to put her past behind her to the charismatic, handsome priest who is a major witness, the characters are riveting. The author has been a social worker and her knowledge of the dark corners of human society is obvious here.

The focus in this story is not so much on McKenna and his group who mainly act as a catalyst, but on the inhabitants of Haughton and the pain they inflict on one another and themselves.

Editorial Review:

When a man is accused of murdering his wife, he is sent to prison for life, only to have his sentence quashed two years later when his alibi evidence is confirmed. Now Superintendent Michael McKenna must investigate whether his police officers deliberately suppressed vital evidence. From the author of THE HOUSE OF WOMEN.

House of Women, The

Alison G. Taylor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

More than a mystery 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This is the first book I've read by Alison Taylor, but probably not the last. She's a very ambitious writer in that she's not afraid to spend a lot of time developing the characters and settings, while throwing in a healthy dose of philosophy, social commentary, and Welsh history. Her characters are wonderfully fleshed out and the reader has the opportunity to watch them become changed as the drama of the novel affects their lives. Each scene of the book is carefully and poetically conveyed. And her thoughts on the human condition; racism, slavery, poverty, addiction, motherhood are all well considered and interesting to read. Alison Taylor does justice to the genre.

Enjoyable 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

My first foray into Alison Taylor's books. I listened to the audio book version - having it read by Steve Hodson with a Welsh lilt made it all the more enjoyble. I will be searching out more from this author.

Not the queen of syntax 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is the first Alison Taylor novel I have purchased and likely to be the last. It's hard to believe she has received enough support from her first 2 novels to warrant a third! House of Women is not an easy read. The text does not flow and syntax is ever changing in the character's dialogue so it's difficult to imagine them as real people. A typical paragraph of dialogue begins with a character speaking proper english only to switch to slang expressions a few sentences later. The true essence of the character is probably somewhere in the middle but never quite conveyed. Even the mannerisms described seem to detract from the general mood Ms. Taylor appears to be attempting to create and do nothing to bring the characters alive. Each time I opened this book, hoping it would become progressively better, I found myself becoming distracted or simply skimming over the bad dialogue and choppy scenes just to get a feel for the plot. A third of the way through the book I decided it wasn't worth the struggle to see if the plot was any better than the writing...