Four Last Things, The

Andrew Taylor's Roth Trilogy was recently made in to a three-part TV adaptation for ITV called Fallen Angel , starring Emilia Fox and Charles Dance. The structure of the Roth Trilogy is unusual in that it is composed of interlocking stories but each novel is self-contained and may be read independently of the others. The first novel, The Four Last Things , is set in the 1990s. The second, The Judgement Of Strangers , moves back to 1970, and the third, The Office Of The Dead , to 1958. Little Lucy Appleyard is snatched from her child minder's on a cold winter afternoon, and the nightmare begins. It is as if the child had disappeared into a black hole with no clues to her whereabouts...until the first grisly discovery in a London graveyard. More such finds are to follow, all at religious sites. In a city haunted by religion, what do these offerings signify?