An Air That Kills, the Lydmouth series launch by Andrew Taylor

Title: An Air That Kills
Author: Andrew Taylor

Publication: St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1995 (originally published 1994)

Genre: Mystery

Setting: 1950s Britain

Plot: Recovering from a love affair, journalist Jill Francis arrives in Lydmouth, an English town near the Welsh border, to visit friends, Philip and Charlotte Wemyss-Browns, only to get caught up in a murder investigation. After Philip picks her up at the train station, they pass and old inn that is being torn down to create council flats, where workers find an old box with human bones and a brooch that very day. Richard Thornhill is the Inspector assigned to investigate the case; he has recently moved from Cambridgeshire with his wife and two children.  Jill and Thornhill meet through her hosts: Philip is the editor of the local Gazette and Charlotte is a long-time resident of Lydmouth who minds other people’s business very energetically.  Thornhill is advised to consult local historian Charlotte about Lydmouth, which gets her and Jill involved in his murder case.  Although Jill and Thornhill are wary of each other, their paths keep crossing as the investigation becomes more complicated before he unravels the secrets of the past and present.

My Impressions: What is the air that kills?  Here, I think it refers to the secrets of the past being revealed unexpectedly and, tragically, resulting in death.   The title comes from A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman:

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows:

Where are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

Rosemary Sutcliff, a big favorite in my family, used Blue Remembered Hills for her memoir in a more nostalgic context but she and Taylor would agree that yon far country is the past.

Jill learns that November is the month of the dead as she approaches Lydmouth, a hint to the reader of what is to come.   She is a London journalist who appears to have worked with Philip before his marriage.  He was romantically interested in her but she did not reciprocate or not enough to marry him, somehow managing to keep him as a friend, which is a useful skill if you later need a place to visit.  At some point, Philip got a job with the Gazette in Lydmouth, married Charlotte, the owner’s daughter, and now runs the paper.  Jill accepted Philip and Charlotte’s invitation without telling them she is recovering from an affair with a married man, and they can barely contain their curiosity, especially when she tells them she quit her job.  When Jill’s lover, a smug MP named Yately, pursues her to Lydmouth and, having drunk too much in a bar, betrays her secret to Thornhill, this causes the detective to slightly reassess his opinion of Jill as arrogant. Charlotte is aware of her husband’s former interest in Jill so although she is the perfect hostess, she may not be thrilled to learn that at the end of the book Jill decides she wants to stay and take the open position on the Gazette. 

A True Lover's Knot belonging to the Queen
https://tinyurl.com/y4z4qcwg

This is the third book by Andrew Taylor I have read recently – all extremely different but similar in their bleak portrayal of humanity.  My mother recommended The Ashes of London, first in four-book historical mystery series set in Restoration England, which I read right before Christmas.  In February, I read The Second Midnight, set in Nazi Europe (my review) which was very dark and so depressing I could barely bring myself to finish it.  Here, Taylor does a good job portraying a dreary town and its grimly distinctive residents, as well as his depiction of place – it seems convincingly like the 50s rather than the 90s when he wrote it   Where he is less successful is making me care about the characters.  Thornhill and his wife are ill-suited but he is not very nice to her, and their move has been stressful for her.  Jill is very self-absorbed and sees everything through her own sense of loss, which is human but gets tiresome.  It was well done (although I guessed the crime and the criminal) but for several days I couldn’t decide if I liked it enough to read more of the series.   I did end up requesting the second book from my branch: sometimes it takes a series more than one book to get going.

Source: Library