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Start giftingAn Unpardonable Crime
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreEdgar Allan Poe is an American boy in England, a child standing on the edge of mysteries. In 1819, two Americans arrive in London. Soon afterward a bank collapses, a man is found horribly mutilated on a building site,another goes missing in the teeming stews of the city's notorious Seven Dials district, a deathbed vigil ends in theft,and an heiress flirts with her inferiors. All the while, Poe's young schoolmaster struggles to understand what is happening before he and his loved ones are destroyed. But the truth, like the youthful Poe himself, has its origins in the New World as well as the Old—in a bitter episode of corruption during the War of 1812.
With settings ranging from the coal-scented urban jungle of late Regency London to the stark winter landscapes of a rural Gloucestershire, An Unpardonable Crime is a multi-layered literary murder mystery, a historical novel, and a love story. In addition to shedding fascinating light on Edgar Allan Poe, the book is a fast-paced suspenseful tale, filled with shocking revelations.
Andrew Taylor is a British author best known for his crime novels, which include the Dougal series, the Lydmouth series, the Roth trilogy, and the historical novel The American Boy. He has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award twice.
Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.
Reviews
“Taylor grabs hold of the nineteenth-century novel and runs…Taylor’s sweeping mystery tale is populated by innocents, eccentrics and evildoers whose lives twist, turn and overlap in a brilliantly intricate pattern.”
“A fluid, atmospheric period thriller…Taylor does an excellent job in portraying early nineteenth-century London and writes in a clear, consistent period style…A pleasurable read that will engross many.”
“The most notable aspect of this novel is Taylor’s masterful use of some of Poe’s most renowned themes, including victimization, extreme states of existence, mysterious presences and mourning for the dead. A delectably dark blend of mystery, gothic horror, romance and literary history, An Unpardonable Crime will leave readers captivated until the very end. A fittingly macabre tribute to the master of the macabre.”
“[This] atmospheric mystery is lots of fun. Simon Vance does a lovely job of making the complex sentences and bygone words of the period writing style easy to listen to... Entirely involving.”
“Taylor knits his considerable skills as a crime writer and as a master of historical detail into a smooth, agreeably complex solution of two mysteries in the life of the real-life Poe.”
“Sounding more like a crew of readers than an individual narrator, British actor Vance excellently portrays the characters’ stark class differences through changes of dialect and tone…Listeners who enjoy steeping themselves in the atmosphere of Regency England will welcome this strong performance.”
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