Goddard, Robert

(British, 1954– )

After training as a teacher, Goddard worked in local government before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, Past Caring (1986), contained the elements that have since won him many admirers: an intricate plot, a flawed protagonist, and the evil of a past crime infecting the present. Martin Radford, a historian manqué, is staying with an old friend on Madeira, where he reads the journal of Edwin Strafford, a member of the Cabinet in Asquith's government. Radford finds himself caught up in the mystery of Strafford's sudden resignation and doomed love-affair with a member of the suffragette movement. Into the Blue (1990), a contemporary mystery set on Rhodes and about a woman's sudden disappearance, won a ‘Thumping Good Read’ award given by bookseller W. H. Smith.

Wilkie Collins, Daphne du Maurier, Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine)  NC