Product Description

A hugely engrossing read from a master storyteller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #215602 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 444 pages

Synopsis
On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls desperately in love with a woman he meets by chance, Marian Esguard. Back in England, he breaks up with his wife and goes to meet Marian at an agreed rendezvous. She fails to show. Ian sets out to solve a mystery that may be 170 years old.

From the Publisher
A hugely engrossing read from a master storyteller.

From the Back Cover
On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls in love with a woman he meets by chance, Marian Esguard. Back in England, he leaves his wife and goes to meet Marian, only for her to vanish from his life as mysteriously as she entered it.

Searching for the woman for whom he has sacrificed everything, Jarrett comes across a Dorset churchyard full of gravestones of dead Esguards. He also meets a psychotherapist, Daphne Sanger. She too is looking for a someone: a former client who believes she is the reincarnation of Marian Esguard, who may have invented photography ten years before Fox Talbot. But why is Marian Esguard unknown to history? And who and where is the woman Jarrett met in Vienna?

Jarrett sets out to solve a mystery whose origins lie amid the magical-seeming properties of early photgraphy. But at the end of his search a trap awaits him. He is caught in a web of deception, woven between the enigmas of the past and the revenges of the present. And there is no way out.

Customer Reviews

Goddard does it again
This is story of a photography Ian,who meets a mystery women in Vienna and then the story begins. Didn't think i would like this one took a few pages to get into but I totally loved it. The plot and the twists are great why cannot i find anyone else who writes like Goddard. I will soon have no more books left to read very very recommended.

Dark, Disturbing and Excellent!
At this moment in time, I am disappointed because I have read all of Robert Goddard's novels and I eagerly await 'Name To A Face'. I envy my son who has just completed 'Past Caring' and still has all the others to read. I re-read the novels frequently and often notice something I had previously missed.
'Caught in the Light' is excellent because it is a convincing story with believable characters. Many people do foolish things and live to regret them. I found the main character frustrating, annoying..... I could go on, but I didn't dislike him. I felt as many of us do towards a family member or a friend. He did bad things but he wasn't a bad person. Goddard's characters are not caricatures but well rounded characters. I engaged with Ian Jarrett and became involved with his plight, whilst having great sympathy for and empathy with his wife and daughter. The story is multi-layered and the layers fit together seamlessly. It is the ending which I feel is so dramatic ( I won't divulge it here )! It would have been so easy and tempting to resolve everything happily but it wouldn't have been such a good novel.

Light entertainment
Ian Jarret, a photographer, was taking pictures in Vienna when he came across the figure of a woman dressed in boots, overcoat, gloves, scarf and fur-trimmed hat. That's how Ian's affair with Marion Esguard started although both were married at the time. Marion suggests that they make a clean break and a fresh start once they return to England. She lets Ian photograph her naked on their bed after passionate sex.
Back in England, Ian declares to his wife Faith that he doesn't wish to live with her anymore and leaves her as he is about to meet Marion again. But then he discovers that the films he brought back from Vienna are blank and exposed as though in a deliberate and calculated act of destruction. In a subsequent phone call Marion admits having sabotaged the films and declares not being able to see Ian again for obscure reasons.
And so begins a wild chase for Ian after the woman he loved so much and after the secrets that lie behind her strange existence.