This isn’t a book that gives you someone to root for – on the contrary it’s entirely unpleasant, peopled by villains and rogues. Despite your best intentions, though, it twists you up deeper and deeper into the coils of its sometimes slow but always darkly fascinating plot. Taylor has a beautiful eye for historical colour and a pitch-perfect ear for accurate turn of phrase. His 1778 New York leaps to life in a way that feels effortlessly right. From the first page you can tell that you’re in the hands of a master of the genre. ''The Scent of Death'' is a slow burner rather than a relentless page-turner, and I’m not sure it’s as fantastically successful as its sister novel ''The American Boy'', but it is still a beautifully executed and engrossing historical thriller from a writer very much on top of his game.
For more of Taylor's special brand of historical mysteries, try [[The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor|The Anatomy of Ghosts]]. We can also recommend [[In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff]] and [[The River of Souls by Robert McCammon]].
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