PAST CARING one of the most gripping thrillers you’ll ever read

A very good thriller with loads of twists and turns to keep the mind working right up until the last sentence

Robert Goddard is a bloody genius. I wanted to gulp it down, but he writes so well you have to savour every word. This story is in my heart now.

I nearly gave up on this book, but I'm glad I persevered. After about I got to about 30% it started to flow a lot better for me.

It’s 1977 and historian Martin Redford has been set the task of solving an old mystery. Why, on a single day in 1910, was the then Home Secretary Edwin Stratford rejected by his fiancée Elizabeth and kicked out of Asquith’s government? Strafford’s memoir makes it clear that he was mystified and utterly devastated by the dual rejection so Martin has nothing much to go on as he begins his enquiries. He encounters various characters and comes up against several dead ends in his search but eventually begins to make progress. At a little over halfway through the novel, Martin has discovered what motivated Asquith and Elizabeth to treat Stratford as they did. However it’s pretty obvious that they were acting on false information and the source of that information remains to be discovered.Up until this point I was really enjoying the book. It was turning out to be a well-paced mystery tale and I was eager to discover how and why the lie about Stratford had originated. However the story then goes off at a tangent as Martin gets embroiled in a great bore of a romance with a university teacher called Eve. The action really slows. Eve sets the pace of the relationship and Martin behaves more like Eve’s lapdog than her lover. I thought the Eve interlude was an unnecessary diversion. She did supply Martin with an important piece of the puzzle but the author could have allowed Martin to discover it for himself.Leaving his dalliance with Eve behind him, Martin goes on to unearth the rest of the mystery and the novel concludes when the truth is finally revealed to all the remaining key players. I did not enjoy the final unravelling as much as the earlier investigation as I had become bogged down in the romance and my interest had waned. I feel that this would have been a standout five star book if the author had just stuck with the central puzzle. He does not do romance anything like as well as he does mystery IMO which spoiled the reading experience a little for me. It’s still a good read though.

Really good! I thoroughly enjoyed every single page of this book. Well written with excellent and unexpected succession of events.

Not as good as his earlier books, but still a good read

This is a novel of such depth and breadth. A haunting story, I was sad to leave it and know it will stay with me for a long time. It belongs up there with those other greats from Brontë and DuMaurier. Just fabulous.

Robert Goddard often writes thrillers in the style of Thirty-nine Steps where an innocent responds to an unexpected event and finds himself involved in a series of inexplicable often dangerous events. But now and again his plots are more profound and this book is one such. Historical characters are introduced in a complex mystery originating in the abrupt termination of a long forgotten political career and few are the thrillers inspired by the verse of Thomas Hardy. Read and ponder about love, family and ambition.