Janet Byfield has everything Wendy Appleyard lacks: she's beautiful; she has a handsome husband, a clergyman on the verge of promotion; and most of all she has an adorable little daughter, Rosie. So when Wendy's life falls apart, it's to her oldest friend, Janet, that she turns. At first it seems to Wendy as though nothing can touch the Byfields' perfect existence in 1950s Cathedral Close, Rosington, but old sins gradually come back to haunt the present, and new sins are bred in their place. The shadow of death seeps through the Close, and only Wendy, the outsider, is able to glimpse the truth. But can she grasp its dark and twisted logic in time to prevent a tragedy whose roots lie buried deep in the past? 'The Office of the Dead' is a chilling novel of crime and retribution, and is the third volume of Andrew Taylor's stunning and acclaimed Roth Trilogy. 'With all due deference to its heavenly virtues, this is a hellishly good novel'SUNDAY EXPRESS 'A highly sinister piece of work'NATASHA COOPER 'TLS'

‘Masterly… will have the reader turning back to check the identities of Taylor’s ambiguous characters and relish his fine writing’Gerald Kaufman, Scotsman ‘It is in the domestic sphere that Taylor triumphs… A highly sinister piece of work Natasha Cooper, TLS ‘The writing is consistenly good’Sunday Times ‘The intellect and the imagination are seized… Andrew Taylor has brought a major literary undertaking to a deeply satisfying conclusion’James Melville, Ham & High

• The final volume in Andrew Taylor’s acclaimed Roth Trilogy, a unique literary achievement which, over the course of three books, strips away the layers of a psychopath’s history • Major marketing campaign to tie together the three books: The Four Last Things, The Judgement of Strangers and The Office of the Dead • National broadsheets advertising and features; spring promotion of trilogy when all three have been repackaged; crime newsletter; Internet feature/extract • Repackage to A format to broaden appeal Competition: Tombland, Dissolution, Conspiracy, Heresy, Destoying Angel, The Devil in the Marshalsea, The Red Hill, The Essex Serpent . S. J. Parris, C. J. Sansom, David Penny, Rory Clements, S G MacLean, S D Sykes, Elly Griffiths, Sarah Dunant