What Book to Read?

Robert Goddard has published a mystery adventure story nearly every year since he started writing in 1986. This one was published in 2012, and I see that there’s already a new one out for 2013. I’ve read most of them over the years; inevitably, some are better than others. This one isn’t his best, but it is still an entertaining read.

Goddard says ‘I find the roots of my writing in my preoccupations with the impact of the past on the present’. Most of his main characters find themselves delving into a mystery hidden in the past, but with the power to influence the present. This one is no exception.  It is 2010. Jonathan Kellaway is one the verge of retirement from the company – now a multinational – that he has worked for all of his life. His job designation is vague – he is seen as the company’s ‘senior trouble-shooter’. But before he goes, the former Chairman, Greville Lashley, who is still a force in the company, wants him to do one last job for him. It seems that Lashley has employed a historian to write a history of the company, but she has found that some of the early records are missing, replaced in their folders by blank paper. Lashley wants Kellaway to find what has become of the missing documents. Kellaway agrees, but with reservations; he has had quite a lot of dealings with Lashley’s family in the past, and digging up corporate history is likely to involve him in things he’d rather forget. ‘A mystery I thought I’d put behind me,’ he says, ‘had tapped me on the shoulder.’ The story then moves to those dealings, first in 1968, then in 1984, coming back at times to the present day investigation.

Like most of Goddard’s books, this has a fairly complex plot, where the relevance of what is included only becomes clear at the end. Readers of this blog will know that I set considerable store on good endings, and while this one does draw together all parts of the narrative, I don’t think it is as good as some of the earlier ones. But perhaps I’m being unreasonable.

Another of the themes that is important to Goddard is the operation of loyalty and treachery. A favour done in return for some personal advantage may seem minor at the time, but leads to deeper webs of intrigue. Small betrayals lead to larger ones. But a decision taken from a sense of obligation can also lead to disaster. ‘I never saw it coming – never guessed how the dominoes might fall. But I pushed them. There’s no denying that. This tragedy was man-made. I should know. I was one of those who made it.’ But any treachery Jonathan may be guilty of pales before that of other characters, and it is these betrayals that drive the story. But I wondered nevertheless if Kellaway’s final decision also a betrayal.

Kellaway, like most of Goddard’s protagonists, is very much an ordinary person with no special powers or expertise. He obviously grows up during the course of the story, but the skills or talents that have made him the company’s ‘senior trouble-shooter’ are not discussed, and not really on show. The Kellaway of 1985 is not quite the brash young man of 1968, but he could still feel ‘fearful and insecure’. ‘All I knew for certain,’ he says, ‘was that I was out of my depth.’ Looking back, he realises ‘There was a subtext to events that I’d failed to see, let alone read.’ Perhaps there isn’t enough difference between Kellaway at eighteen and Kellaway at sixty – he sounds the same in all three time periods. This is complicated by the fact that it’s not always clear how far events are taking place in the present  – though an earlier present – and how far they are being recalled. This is perhaps a weakness in the structure of the story.

Goddard said when he first started as a novelist that ‘I was inspired to take up writing by a growing dissatisfaction with much contemporary literature in which I detect a growing rift between technique and meaning. By wedding richness of language and intricacy of plot to narrative drive and dense imagery, I seek to heal that rift’. I thought with some of the earlier books that he might indeed be producing work of the stature of other great mystery writers, such as Wilkie Collins or Daphne du Maurier. This one isn’t up to that standard, or even his own stated intent. Perhaps you can’t write more than twenty books of that quality. Or perhaps I should just be pleased to have found an easy and enjoyable read without asking for more.

You can see more about Robert Goddard here.

PS This is yet another book where the blurb on the cover is quite misleading as to the story. What is with this?