Product Description

Why should distinguished Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Strafford resign at the height of his parliamentary career? Why does the woman he loves so suddenly and coldly reject him? Why, seventy years later, should people go to such lengths -- even as far as murder -- to prevent the truth from being revealed? Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, leaps at the chance to get to the island of Madeira and begin the hunt for a solution to the intriguing secret of Edwin Stafford's fall from grace. However, his seeming good fortune turns to nightmare as his investigation triggers a bizarre and violent train of events which remorselessly entangles him and those who believed they had escaped the spectre of crimes long past but never paid for...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8110 in Books
• Published on: 1987-07-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 524 pages

Review
First-novelist Goddard tells a labyrinthine first-person tale of a historian whose assignment to solve a vintage mystery entangles him in a web of deceit and violence. At loose ends, divorced and unemployed Martin Radford travels to Madeira, where he meets Leo Sellick, a wealthy businessman living in a house once owned by the late Edwin Strafford, a member of Asquith's cabinet. At Leo's request, Martin reads Strafford's journal: after a meteoric rise, Strafford fell for a suffragette - political poison in that era. Willing to forego career for love, he resigned his post as Home Secretary; but that night his fiancee, Elizabeth, mysteriously broke off contact with him. Strafford then attempted to retract his resignation, to no avail. After years of despair, during which Elizabeth married his college friend, Gerald Couchman, Strafford accepted a consular post in Madeira, where he spent the rest of his life. Martin is elated when Leo hires him to root out the cause of Elizabeth's desertion of Strafford. Returning to England, Martin grows close to an aged Elizabeth, investigates the powerful Couchman family, and gets involved with a bewitching grad student. The plot thickens as Strafford's son, possessor of a later journal of Strafford's, is murdered by Couchman's son Henry. After weeks of digging, Martin gets his hands on this second journal and learns that Couchman, with the compli-of cabinet members who found Strafford a political liability, tricked Elizabeth into believing that Strafford was a bigamist. Confronting Leo, Martin reveals his find: that Leo is Couchman's bastard son and that he murdered Strafford. Leo assaults Elizabeth; Martin shoots and kills him. He is in prison when Elizabeth dies, leaving him the Madeira house, to which he retires upon his release. A satisfying, complex, and compelling debut. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Back Cover
Why should distinguished Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Strafford resign at the height of his parliamentary career? Why does the woman he loves so suddenly and coldly reject him? Why, seventy years later, should people go to such lengths - even as far as murder - to prevent the truth from being revealed?

Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, leaps at the chance to get to the island of Madeira and begin the hunt for a solution to the intriguing secret of Edwin Strafford's fall from grace. However, his seeming good fortune turns to nightmare as his investigation triggers a bizarre and violent train of events which remorselessly entangles him and those who believed they had escaped the spectre of crimes long past but never paid for...

About the Author
Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and read History at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw.

Customer Reviews

never wanted it to end
when I finished this book I threw it across the room in anger. I wanted to know more and more. A Goddard book is a journey, an adventure. I happily went along. But I couldn't leave the house until I was done reading it. The voices of the flawed narrators are compelling. In particular - take a look at what he does with Aubrey... a cypher made flesh. Wonderful.

One of Robert Goddard's best
Martin Redford is an unemployed and divorced ex-schoolteacher of foundered promise and dismal prospect. So when Alec Fowler suggests that Martin comes to visit him on the island of Madeira with the promise of a prospective job offered by his South African friend Leo Sellick, he eagerly accepts.
It turns out that when Sellick became the owner of his house, the Quinta do Porto Novo, he came across a manuscript written by its previous owner, Edwin Strafford. Strafford had been appointed Home Secretary in 1908 at the age of thirty-two. Why did he resign two years later without explanation before becoming British Consul on Madeira? Why was he abruptly rejected by his fiancée, suffragette Elizabeth Latimer? Who or what betrayed Edwin Strafford in 1910? It is going to be a twisty path for Martin Redford, now Leo Sellick's employee, to find the answers to these questions and many others.
A good plot and a sound historical background are the qualities of this entertaining adventure story. Paul Shelley is the excellent reader of this novel for BBC Audiobooks.

Rivetting
I loved this book. I couldn't put it down for the first 400 pages. There are however more than 500 pages, the last of these seemed a bit of an anticlimax. Perhaps I'd been emotionally drained by then. By this point however the mystery which compels you to keep reading has been revealed. Goddard seems to struggle to bring it all to a satisfactory end but don't let that put you off reading this excellent novel. I could have happily stopped contented at what Goddard achieves before the last fifth of the book.