![]() What appealed to me was its setting in contemporary Greece, though that marked a departure at that the time for the author, who had written mostly historical novels. I discovered Goddard when I picked up his fourth novel, Into the Blue, in a used-book store. His most recent, The Ends of the Earth, the third volume in a trilogy, appeared in Britain last year and is coming out in the U.S. The author, now 61, published his first novel, Past Caring, in 1986. ![]() Marilyn Stasio, for instance, in a short 2006 review of Borrowed Time, spoke of his “achingly romantic fictions - a male narrator awakened to life by an encounter with an unattainable woman.”Īlthough that is changing, Goddard is, in fact, little known to American readers, even though many of his 26 novels made the bestseller lists in Britain. To the extent his books get any notice at all in the august New York Times Book Review, it is generally among those short reviews of crime fiction, where critics have settled on “romantic thriller” to describe Goddard’s novels. ![]() The British novelist is an old-fashioned writer for old-fashioned readers, and his plot-driven thrillers can probably be classified as whatever is the opposite of chick lit (that is, for readers like me, men of a certain age, and others who often prefer just a good adventure yarn). Robert Goddard’s latest book won’t be getting any book-club buzz or come out in a reader’s guide edition with questions and answers for group discussion. ![]()
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