Sight Unseen - Robert Goddard

Background:

I have read and reviewed several novels by Robert Goddard in the last few months. He is a popular suspense/ mystery writer and one I have always enjoyed reading. This book I found while browsing round the crime section in my local library.

About the author:

Robert Goddard was born in Farnham in Hampshire on the 13th November 1954. His big passion other than writing is history. You can see this ...
...to our history and documents from it. He has written 20 successful books since the first one was published in 1986.

Synopsis of the book:

It is just a normal summer day in the peaceful tourist village of Avebury in 1981. David Umber is a student compiling his thesis on Junius sitting outside a pub waiting for a man called Griffin who has some important information for him on this mystery man. While he waits sipping his ... more

Background:

I have read and reviewed several novels by Robert Goddard in the last few months. He is a popular suspense/ mystery writer and one I have always enjoyed reading. This book I found while browsing round the crime section in my local library.

About the author:

Robert Goddard was born in Farnham in Hampshire on the 13th November 1954. His big passion other than writing is history. You can see this in many of his novels as they are often linked to our history and documents from it. He has written 20 successful books since the first one was published in 1986.

Synopsis of the book:

It is just a normal summer day in the peaceful tourist village of Avebury in 1981. David Umber is a student compiling his thesis on Junius sitting outside a pub waiting for a man called Griffin who has some important information for him on this mystery man. While he waits sipping his beer he looks out onto a green.

His life will change forever as he sees a young woman with 3 children walking there. Suddenly a man appears and takes the youngest child and puts her into his waiting van and drives off. The eldest girl tries to cut him off and runs into the road, where she is run over and killed by the escaping vehicle. Umber has seen this tragedy unfold and barely had time to rise to his feet before it is all over.

23 years later Umber is drawn back to England from Prague by a retired Detective George Sharp, who is keen to re-investigate the case he originally worked on. He has received a letter supposedly from Junius advising that it is not too late to find the truth of the affair. Both men are haunted by that day and need to know the truth so they return to see if what they can uncover.

Can they discover the truth all these years later? Why was the child taken? Is their a link to Junius? And why now?

My thoughts on this book:

I thought this was quite a good novel. It was at times a very good novel and at times it bored me and I found it hard going. Quite a contrast and I will try and explain why in the next few paragraphs. For me this was not as good as the other books written by this author, it was passable but not a fascinating read.

What I really enjoyed was the story of Umber and Sharp trying to find the truth and piece together the answers to the mystery of the little girl's abduction. There were so many exciting twists and turns which very rarely were expected that I was always kept on my toes as to what would happen next.

What I found difficult with the story of the book was the Historical parts. When Umber talked about and researched Jenius, I found this dull, confusing and difficult to relate to. I could not get excited about letters that were written by a mystery person 200 years before and how they related to the abduction of a two year old girl. And even when I understand the reason, I thought the book did not require it to improve it.

I was immediately stuck by the brief description of the book on the back cover. That alone got me looked on the story, it was such an odd, horrid but strangely gripping opening that made he want to know why this had happened. What happened to the rest of the family and how they had dealt with it?

For me the story could and should have been concluded earlier. I thought the author could have sawn up the story much earlier. As it was he continued to make more twists and turns until I felt quite dizzy. For my money some of these were not necessary and made the story to long and drawn out.

The standard of writing I thought was very good. I liked the way the author introduced both new characters and changing setting for them. This certainly added to my enjoyment of the novel as there were always new things to learn about them, which added different perspectives to the investigation.

The book was certainly full of mystery and suspense. I was never really sure who the good guys were and who were the bad ones. As many of the characters Goddard created seemed to have their own objectives and were never straight forward with their information. They seemed to only supply help that suited them and not what they really knew.

Clearly David Umber was the novel's main character, as it followed his progress in the hunt for the truth. He was one I found very easy to empathise and relate to. With the way he was haunted by the past and his wife's death. So it was understandable that he needed to know the truth.

I also enjoyed the role the supporting characters played. They were fascinating although I struggled to immediately understand some of their motives in their roles, but that in a way added to the intrigue. They were all well described with interesting personalities.

I must admit I never really understand where Percy Nevinson fitted into the story and what he was about. He was just a bit weird for me in my opinion perhaps that was indeed his role.

The novel's ending was not a bit like I expected it to be. All the way through the book there were unexpected happenings. I expected something different involving a few of the characters from the novel. I found it an unlikely ending but one I could except given everything I had read before.

What the author failed to do for me was to explain in the epilogue what happened to characters such as, Sharp, Nevinson and Wisby. I was impressed there was an epilogue and a prologue for that matter but I expected then to be longer than a page and to tell you what happened to all the books characters a few months down the line.

A feature that did impress me was the author's notes at the end of the book. I always assumed he had made up Junius, but he certainly had not and he explained briefly about this mystery man from our history and how the riddle of his or her identity has never been completely proven.

It was quite an exciting book to read, but not a real page turner for me. It was skilfully broken up into well constructed chapters that allowed you where necessary to have a break and get your breath back.

I was pleased to see a dedicated web site as below, but when I tried to go there for information it advised me the site was under construction, quite annoying!!

Although this book was written in 2005, I have seen it at several Jumble and Car Boot Sales. From these you can pick this book up at a fraction of its new cost. I would recommend doing that as for me it isn't worth its new value.

Conclusion:

Overall I would describe this as an average novel. For my money it is the weakest one I have read so far from usually talented author. I would only recommend this to genuine fans of Goddard.

Price: £5.49 (New Amazon)
Pages: 442
Publisher: Corgi Books
ISBN: 0-532-15210-2
About the author: www.robertgoddard.co.uk
Year of Publication: 2005

Hope this review has helped in your purchasing decision.

Thanks for reading.

@CPTDANIELS November 2008 

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