La trama gira inicialmente en torno a la macabra muerte de un gato, en la que algunos de los habitantes ven una advertencia, pero no tardan en surgir nuevos enigmas, con la llegada de una extraña pareja que se presentan como hermanos a una señorial mansión que nadie sabe a ciencia cierta cómo han podido pagar. A través de la mirada de David Byfield, un párroco viudo que está enamorándose de una editora, el autor va presentando a una amplia galería de personajes, cada uno de los cuales parece tener algo que ocultar en su pasado.

If you've already read The Four Last Things you've had exposure to four of the main characters in this story, the second volume of the "Roth Trilogy." So as not to spoil anything in this or the other two books, I will not say who's who.

This story is told from the third-person perspective. Unlike the first book, which was a taut thriller, this book is - at the beginning - a story about a minister who has been assigned to an out-of-the-way town church, where he lives with his daughter. The story takes place 20 years before The Four Last Things, so we get to understand why certain things were they way they were in the earlier story. That's the interesting part of a series of stories that take place in reverse order: the subsequent books give historical insight into the previous story.

There is an air of inevitability to this book that keeps the reader moving through the story, and although the story is not as taut as the first, it is far more satisfying in the development of its characters. This book is a well written, intriguing mystery that is kind of hard to put down. ( )

Love this book. ( )

Once I started listening to this, from somewhere the vague knowledge surfaced that it was part of Taylor's Roth trilogy. In fact, I know I had intended to read the trilogy once and here I was listening to #2 in the series.

It is ten years since his first wife died and David Byfield has been celibate all that time, focussing his attention on bringing up his daughter Rosemary, who is now getting ready for her university entrance exams. Rosemary is resentful of her new step-mother Vanessa, and Vanessa has no intention of being simply a vicar's wife. She has a successful career in publishing and has no intention of abandoning it.

Roth Park, the manor house near the vicarage, has recently been bought by Toby Clifford and his sister Joanna. They have hopes of turning it into a classy hotel.

The village of Roth, on the outskirts of London, and being brought closer to the city by a motorway, is about to have the church fete and on night of the fete everything comes to a climax.

THE JUDGEMENT OF OTHERS is a deceptive mixture of saga, village cozy, romance, and crime novel with a slight touch of the paranormal.
Sometimes you feel sorry for David Byfield, at other times you feel like shaking him.

My rating: 4.4

I remember hearing Andrew Taylor talking at a Writers Festival (perhaps Adelaide some years back) talking about the Roth trilogy.
There are 3 books in the trilogy:
1. The Four Last Things (1997)
2. The Judgement of Strangers (1998)
3. The Office of the Dead (2000)
and then they were published as Requiem for an Angel (omnibus) (2002) aka Fallen Angel
The blurb for the latter gives a clue about the structure of the trilogy:
Beginning, in "The Four Last Things", with the abduction of little Lucy Appleyard and a grisly discovery in a London graveyard, the layers of the past are gradually peeled away through "The Judgement of Strangers" and "The Office of the Dead" to unearth the roots of a very immediate horror.

Well, it has me hooked. I'm going to listen to THE FOUR LAST THINGS next. ( )

This is another of the Roth Trilogy. I have been reading them in the order of publication, but they go back in time, so this book explains the background in the horror presented in [The Four Last Things].

Thsi story is set in 1970. David Byfield, a widowed parish vicar, is invited to a party at which he meets his next wife, which sets the stage for future trouble. In the background there are some mysterious papers regarding a poet from the parish's past. There is a lady curate, a godson, a daughter, and a new couple in the village to stir things up. Matters smoulder for a while and buust into a wife conflagration (literally and figurately) at the end. ( )