About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

NAME TO A FACE
by Robert Goddard
Bantam Press, September 2007
369 pages
14.99 GBP
ISBN: 0593053672


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Barney Tozer is a tax exile, living in luxury in Monaco. When his uncle Gabriel dies, Barney's brother Humph, who still lives in Cornwall, calls on Barney to help him recover a ring which he alleges Gabriel stole from their father long ago.

Gabriel has left all his effects to be auctioned off, and the proceeds donated to charity. Barney is unable to return to the UK as it would endanger his tax status, so he dispatches his friend and employee Tim Harding to Cornwall to purchase the ring at auction. Tim, the novel's protagonist, has his own ghosts in Cornwall, but is in no position to refuse, especially as he is guilty about the fact that he is having an affair with Barney's wife Carol.

When Tim arrives in Penzance he is propelled into a mystery which spins rapidly out of his control. A mysterious girl who was Gabriel's housekeeper appears; Tim is convinced he has seen her before but has no idea where. As the story develops a number of historical stories impinge on the narrative – the Grey Man of Ennor who was supposed to have cured Cornish people of the Black Death in the 14th century, the wreck of the naval ship HMS Association on the Scilly Isles in 1707, the murder of the antiquarian Godfrey Shillingstone by one of the Tozers' ancestors some 30 years later, the disappearance of a ring which the admiral on board the HMS Association had been wearing, and finally the death of a journalist, Kerry Foxton, on a diving expedition at the site of the shipwreck in 1999.

The narrative proceeds at pace with Harding moving from Cornwall to the Scilly Islands, to London, to Monaco, to Munich, back to Cornwall and the Scillies with a final climax back in Monaco. At nearly every turn there is a plot twist or development, most of which leave Harding more baffled and stymied than before.

This is a highly competent book. The plot has been well conceived and the various strands are neatly tied together. Goddard varies the scene continuously, and piles on the plot twists so that the reader is never bored. It's well-written, well-plotted, well-paced: but in the last analysis there is something missing.

While likeable and interesting enough Tim Harding never fully engages the sympathy. And the book is never really believable in any of its plot strands. None of this would matter, of course, if the plot were brilliant, but while the twists and turns are enough to keep one guessing, there is nothing really staggering, no 'what a fool I've been' moments. And at least one of the final explanations verges on the ridiculous. Perhaps this is hyper-critical. NAME TO A FACE is a well-written, enjoyable read. But it is never more than that.

Reviewed by Nick Hay, January 2008

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]