The American Boy by Andrew Taylor

Set in England in the year 1819, The American Boy is a gothic historical fiction that unravels slowly into a tangled murder mystery. The protagonist and narrator of the story is a young man, Thomas Shield. His involvement in the affairs of the Frant and Carswall families begins with his appointment as an usher at a boarding school in Stoke Newington, near London. Here, he comes into contact with two new students, Edgar Allan, a precocious boy adopted by an American couple and Charles Frant. It is Charles’ parents, Henry and Sophie and their relatives, Stephen Carswall and his daughter Flora that are at the centre of this web of greed, power and treachery.

Placed as he is, in the grey area of being neither a servant nor a gentleman, Thomas has a unique vantage point from which to observe the shady manoeuvres of the two banking families, hidden behind a façade of wealth and gentility. Thomas gets sucked into a mire of murder and cheating by his actions initially in service of Henry Frant and later, Stephen Carswall despite not fully understanding the significance of his actions until much later.

As a man with a new job, a small inheritance and not much else going for him, Shield looks to curry favour where he can. That’s not all though. His desire for both Flora and Sophie also contributes to his eagerness to participate in this family intrigue which ends up threatening his livelihood, reputation and life.

It takes about 100 pages of this 480-page book to get to the first major event in the novel, the brutal murder and disfigurement of a man on a building plot owned by Henry Frant’s bank. Given that this is supposed to be a mystery, 100 pages seems like a tediously long wait to get to anything that constitutes a mystery. While Taylor does toss in many teasers that foreshadow future happenings, it is still likely to be a bit too slow for readers who prefer to get to the quick a bit faster.

In this, The American Boy is different from Andrew Taylor’s other novel, The Scent of Death even though they have many similarities such as privileged, enigmatic female characters with husbands who aren’t what they seem and male protagonists-cum-narrators finding their way through changed circumstances. The latter established a murder right from the protagonist’s first day in New York which made it a great deal pacier.

Despite Taylor’s relaxed approach to cracking open the mystery at the heart of The American Boy, his atmospheric rendering of the jam-packed slums and foggy nights of London as well as the rolling hills of the Carswalls’ country estate with its ice house and abandoned abbey, is both evocatively gothic and immersive.

The major characters are well fleshed out, even if the motivations of some characters are tougher to comprehend. Especially the attraction that Thomas Shield holds for the major female characters in the novel, Sophia and Flora, because frankly, he comes across as quite colourless and passive. I can’t imagine what he had going for him to attract these worldly women apart from being the teller of his own story!

The protagonist’s depiction of class differences and the role that money and status play, even in his own mind, is well-done and has a lived-in quality.

"For the first time in my life, I was about to be a man of substance, the absolute master of £103 and a few shillings and pence. The knowledge changed me. Wealth may not be happiness, but at least it has the power to avert certain causes of sorrow. And it makes a man feel he has a place in the world."

Andrew Taylor deftly uses Thomas’ first-person narration to reveal not just the attributes of a person being described and assessed but also, the narrator’s own ideas, prejudices and deepest desires. A great example of this is Thomas’ assessment of Henry Frant when he first meets him.

“I envied him: here was a man who had everything the gods could bestow including an air of breeding and consequence that sat naturally upon him, as though he were its rightful possessor. Even now, God help me, part of me envies him as he was then.”

Taylor imbues the dialogue with the formality and restraint of the late Georgian Era. In the author’s note, Andrew Taylor spoke of his deep interest in researching the vocabulary in use during the period in which he has based The American Boy. All that research appears to have paid off. That said, the repeated interruptions during key conversations to create cliffhangers feel more than a bit contrived.

Around the time a second dead body is discovered, Thomas realises he was a mere pawn in the hands of powerful people and that his own future and reputation are now at stake.

“It seemed that I had acquired a past I did not want and the possibility of a future I did not desire.”

Now, about the title. I can’t fathom why the title of this novel is The American Boy. The only American boy among the characters is Edgar Allan who would grow up to become the famous writer, Edgar Allan Poe. But he is, at best, a side character in this drama, remaining off-stage for much of the book and with no direct connection to the central plot.

Broadly, The American Boy is well-written in terms of style and atmosphere but too convoluted to be believable in terms of plot. There are portions in the book, especially towards the climax, that are needlessly intricate without sufficient pay-off.