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FAULT LINE
by Robert Goddard
Bantam, March 2012
416 pages
16.99 GBP
ISBN: 0593065204


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Robert Goddard is a master of the art of taking his readers on a journey back through time, interweaving strands from the past into the present to create a seamless whole, and FAULT LINE is no exception to that rule. Jonathan Kellaway, the narrator, works for Intercontinental Kaolins, and although he's just handed in his notice, he's tasked by the chairman, Greville Lashley, with the job of tracking down some missing records from the company's past. If Kellaway wants to safeguard his pension, he has little option other than to agree. After a lifetime spent working in the China Clay industry, Kellaway knows where a lot of the bodies are buried, and the company does indeed have a somewhat chequered past when it comes to that sort of thing.

In 1959 a senior executive committed suicide in a fume-filled car. Unknown to him his young son was hiding in the boot. Ten years later, that same boy, now a teenager, develops an obsession with what he believes to be the mystery of his father's death. The briefcase his father left the house with was not found with his body and Oliver Foster wants to know what happened to it. Kellaway becomes involved in events both then and later, and he never forgets his emotional entanglement with Vivien, the dead boy's sister. The story alternates between 2010 and 1968/9 as Kellaway tries to piece together the riddle of the missing documents, taking him on a journey that spans nearly 50 years of his involvement with the same company.

FAULT LINE proceeds at a deceptively slow but always engaging pace. There are no dramatic car chases or high octane excitement; instead the story delves deeply into the lives and business interests of the Wren family, who founded Walter Wren and company, later swallowed up by Cornish China Clays. In less assured hands the narrative might have been in danger of dragging, but I never felt that and soon became wrapped up in an intriguing tale of murder and mystery shifting backwards and forwards between Cornwall and a sun-soaked villa on the island of Capri. Even an ultimately somewhat unconvincing explanation behind the disappearance of the paperwork didn't spoil my enjoyment of an unhurried but always interesting narrative.

§ Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, March 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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