Goddard, Robert 1954–

(Robert William Goddard)

PERSONAL: Born November 13, 1954, in Fareham, Hampshire, England; son of William James (a civil servant) and Lilian Margaret Goddard; married Vaunda North (a local government officer), September 14, 1984.

Education: Peterhouse, Cambridge, B.A., 1976, M.A., 1980; University of Exeter, postgraduate certificate in education, 1977. Religion: Anglican.

ADDRESSES: Home—Truro, Cornwall, England. Agent—Simon Trewin, PFD, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA, England.

CAREER: Began career as a teacher; Devon County Council, Devon, England, educational administrator, 1978–87; full-time writer, 1987–.

AWARDS, HONORS: Booker Prize nomination, 1986, for Past Caring; In Pale Battalions was a Literary Guild alternate selection.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Past Caring, R. Hale (London, England), 1986, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1987.

In Pale Battalions, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1988.

Painting the Darkness, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1989.

Into the Blue, Bantam (London, England), 1990, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1991.

Take No Farewell, Bantam (London, England), 1991, published as Debt of Dishonour, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1991.

Hand in Glove, Bantam (London, England), 1992, Washington Square Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Closed Circle, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1993.

Borrowed Time, Bantam (London, England), 1995.

Out of the Sun, Bantam (London, England), 1996, Holt (New York, NY), 1997.

Beyond Recall, Bantam (London, England), 1997, Holt (New York, NY), 1998.

Caught in the Light, Bantam (London, England), 1998, Holt (New York, NY), 1999.

Set in Stone, Bantam (London, England), 1999.

Sea Change, Bantam (London, England), 2000.

Dying to Tell, Bantam (London, England), 2001.

Days without Number, Bantam (London, England), 2003.

Play to the End, Bantam (London, England), 2004, Delta Trade Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2006.

Sight Unseen, Bantam (London, England), 2005, Delta Trade Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2007.

Never Go Back, Bantam (London, England), 2006.

OTHER

Contributor to periodicals, including Illustrated London News, Hampshire Magazine, and Writer's Monthly.

ADAPTATIONS: Into the Blue was adapted for film in the United Kingdom; Chivers Audiobooks has recorded audiobook adaptations of the following novels: Caught in the Light, 1998, Into the Blue, 2000, Set in Stone, 2000, Sea Change, 2001, Painting the Darkness, 2001, Take No Farewell, 2001, and Past Caring, 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: British writer Robert Goddard is esteemed for his skill in creating intriguing and suspenseful narratives. Noted for their richly textured plots, enigmatic characters, and shadowy English settings, Goddard's novels have been compared to those of revered modern romance author Daphne du Maurier.

Goddard's first book, Past Caring, depicts the efforts of Martin Radford, a young history graduate, to uncover information on the life of Edwin Strafford, a controversial political figure of Edwardian England. Martin's research is funded by a wealthy South African who, after stumbling upon Strafford's memoirs, wishes to know more about his abrupt resignation from the British cabinet and his truncated romance with Elizabeth Latimer, an English suffragist. Martin eventually uncovers a morass of intrigue, corruption, and murder in Strafford's past and discovers that he himself is remotely connected to the man; Martin's estranged wife is Elizabeth's granddaughter. The interweaving of plots prompted reviewer Alan Bell in the Los Angeles Times Book Review to criticize Past Caring for being "rather overambitiously conceived. It falls between being a straight novel in which character and motive are the prime target, and a mystery in which the conundrum and its unraveling mean that plot increasingly takes over from the niceties of individual character delineation." Alan Ryan, though, called the novel "an immensely complex tale," in the Washington Post Book World, "with mysteries and suspense in both past and present, but Goddard has remarkable narrative skill and the story never becomes unwieldy." Further applauding the novel's subtle cynicism about the truth of recorded history, Ryan proclaimed Past Caring "one of the best novels I've read in a long, long time…. The ideas are challenging, and the emotions tug at the heart. I loved every one of its 500 pages."

In his second and third novels Goddard again chooses historical England as a backdrop for stories of mystery and suspense. Set during and after World War I, In Pale Battalions chronicles three generations of the Hallows family. The Hallows's history is related to Penelope of the third generation by her mother who, as a result of the family's improprieties, was raised as an orphan by her malicious step-grandmother. The book was praised for its complex plot, multiple narrative voices, and its ability to shock and surprise the reader. In Painting the Darkness, Goddard's third novel, Victorian England is the setting for the Davenall family saga. The family is troubled by a suspicious character named James Norton who claims he is the missing Sir James Davenall, a man whose disappearance eleven years earlier was designated a suicide. The plot is complicated by the conflicting opinions of those who knew Sir James Davenall; Davenall's mother, brother, and cousin call Norton an imposter, but the woman Davenall was to marry before his disappearance believes Norton's assertions. Although Julian Symons complained in the Washington Post Book World that "less than a quarter of the way through the book,… Goddard abandons near-fact for complete fiction, and a Victorian sobriety of style for high Gothic," the reviewer noted that "the Victorian background is solidly and carefully rendered" and "the case of Norton versus Davenall, by which Norton seeks to have his claim accepted, has very clever turns in it." London Times critic Philippa Toomey thought Painting the Darkness has "all the ingredients of a first-class melodrama" and deemed it an "engaging and satisfying novel."

Into the Blue, Goddard's fourth book, was well-received by Los Angeles Times contributor Carolyn See, who described it as "a suspenseful romance, with clue after clue after clue, and hidden pasts, and strings of murders, but all of it is very smart, very complex—profound without being pretentious." The story focuses on Harry Barnett, a middle-aged Englishman whose dull existence is enlivened when the beautiful young Heather Mallender comes to vacation on the Greek island where Harry works as a caretaker. Shortly after the two become friends, Heather mysteriously vanishes while sight-seeing; the rest of the novel deals with Harry's search for clues to her whereabouts. As in Goddard's other stories, the plot eventually reveals numerous twists and turns and an intricate network of connections among the characters. The complexity of Into the Blue elicited praise from See, who suggested that the book is "fun to read as an intellectual puzzle."

Harry Barnett is again the lead character in Goddard's 1996 novel, Out of the Sun. A Publishers Weekly reviewer reported: "Using booze to shut out the pain of personal failure, the ineptly idealistic and ever-chivalrous antihero is stunned back into reality" when an anonymous phone caller informs him that he is the father of a nationally known, thirty-three-year-old mathematical genius. This long-lost son is in an apparently irreversible coma, however, following an insulin overdose. Barnett's efforts to save his child lead him through a maze of sinister schemes in the corporate and academic worlds, in what the Publishers Weekly writer called "a harrowing odyssey" that ends with "a heart-stopping climactic confrontation." Booklist contributor Joanne Wilkinson approved: "This well-written thriller offers off-beat subject matter and a finely etched portrait of Harry, a tough old bird whose hands are never quite steady but whose mind is lightning quick." Edwin B. Burgess, writing in Library Journal, deemed it "by turns scary and intelligent."

Goddard again drew positive reviews with his 1997 offering, Beyond Recall, and 1998's Caught in the Light. In the former, the author uses the elements of the classic English mystery—the grand old estate, a disputed family fortune, blackmail, and murder—to create what a Publishers Weekly writer termed "an absorbing suspense novel with a modern sensibility." The plot concerns Chris Napier, who returns to his family's ancestral home after years of estrangement. Once there, he begins investigating a thirty-four-year-old murder case. "Goddard intricately interweaves the life stories of three generations," noted the reviewer, and "is meticulous with background details and local color…. His characters, with their good manners and dark secrets, seem to have stepped out of a Daphne Du Maurier novel." New York Times reviewer Marilyn Stasio found Beyond Recall "evocative," and noted: "There's an elegant arc to Goddard's fluid style, which gracefully orchestrates the story over its broad time span and through the ambiguous testimony of its complex characters."

Caught in the Light, like Into the Blue, deals with a woman's inexplicable disappearance. When a traveling photographer named Ian Jarrett falls suddenly in love with a mysterious woman named Marian Esguard, he impulsively decides to abandon his wife and child for her. But Marian disappears, and Ian discovers she was not who she claimed to be. Teaming up with a psychiatrist, he goes in search of Marian only to become entangled in a complicated world of crime and murder. According to a Publishers Weekly writer, "the convoluted plot swerves from modern mystery to Regency romance to psychological thriller…. What gives cohesion to the story is the lovingly detailed account of the art and science of photography." Other critics also found merit in Goddard's creation. "The characters are well delineated," remarked Katherine E.A. Sorci in Library Journal, "but the real excitement is in the author's manipulation of the plot."

Other mystery tales by Goddard include Play to the End and Sight Unseen. The former follows the author's typical style of engaging his hero in a complex web of secrecy and duplicity. When actor Toby Flood gets a call from his wife, Jenny, about a man who she believes is stalking her, he sets out to discover what is happening, even though Jenny plans to divorce him for the wealthy Roger Colborn. Toby soon learns, however, that Roger is a sinister figure, and Toby needs to find the truth behind Roger's plans before the woman he still loves comes to harm. Some critics of Goddard's seventeenth novel were somewhat nonplused, with a Kirkus Reviews contributor describing it as "entertaining piffle," and Jane la Plante complaining in Library Journal that the author "fails to bring his characters to life."

Sight Unseen centers on the kidnapping of a two-year-old toddler and death of her sibling, both the result of one criminal in one horrible day of the Hall family. Losing two children at one time rips the Hall family apart; then, years later, a detective believes that the man who eventually confessed to the crime was not really involved and that a man named Umber, whom he tracks down in Prague, is really to blame. Umber claims his innocence and joins forces with the detective to find out what really happened in another complex story that a January Magazine critic described as "cliff-hanging suspense fiction of an unusually high caliber—literary and memorable."

Goddard once told CA: "I find the roots for my writing in my preoccupation with the impact of the past on the present. 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."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1997, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Out of the Sun, p. 1404; February 15, 1999, Bill Ott and David Pitt, review of Caught in the Light, p. 1046; December 15, 2005, Allison Block, review of Borrowed Time, p. 26.

Bookseller, February 4, 2005, review of Sight Unseen, p. 29.

Detroit Free Press, June 21, 2006, Ron Bernas, "Master of the Literary Thriller Back in Print."

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2005, review of Borrowed Time, p. 1205; April 1, 2006, review of Play to the End, p. 312.

Library Journal, May 1, 1997, Edwin B. Burgess, review of Out of the Sun, p. 139; February 15, 1999, Katherine E.A. Sorci, review of Caught in the Light, p. 183; April 1, 2006, Jane la Plante, review of Play to the End, p. 82.

Los Angeles Times, January 28, 1991, Carolyn See, review of Into the Blue.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 25, 1987, Alan Bell, review of Past Caring.

New York Times, June 21, 1998, Marilyn Stasio, review of Beyond Recall.

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 1997, review of Out of the Sun, p. 197; April 20, 1998, review of Beyond Recall, p. 48; January 18, 1999, review of Caught in the Light, p. 324; December 12, 2005, review of Borrowed Time, p. 40; March 20, 2006, review of Play to the End, p. 39.

Times (London, England), August 19, 1989, Philippa Toomey, review of Painting the Darkness.

Washington Post Book World, February 1, 1987, Alan Ryan, review of Past Caring; August 27, 1989, Julian Symons, review of Painting the Darkness.

ONLINE

January Magazine, http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (June 1, 2005), review of Sight Unseen.