Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52068 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 444 pages

Review
Goddard's latest example of luxe period menace owes less to Daphne du Maurier, his usual model, than to Hitchcock's Vertigo. On assignment photographing wintry Vienna, Ian Jarrett meets and falls for Marian Esguard. In between horizontal engagements, the couple agree to start divorce proceedings against their spouses and meet in a few days at Lacock Abbey, the site of one of pioneer British photographer William Fox Talbot's best-known pictures. But although Ian tells his wife Faith and his teenaged daughter Amy about the new woman in his life, unburdening himself with a directness that bums his bridges, he waits in vain at Lacock. It's all been a mistake, Marian tells him in a tantalizing phone call; he'll never see her again, and mustn't look for her. Naturally, Ian immediately does exactly that, unearthing Daphne Sanger, a therapist who treated Marian for what amounts to delusions of possession. Eris Moberly, the woman Ian knew as Marian Esguard, has become convinced that she's the reincarnation of Marian Esguard (1787-18247), who may have invented photography 20 years ahead of Fox Talbot. As Ian peers deeper into Eris's unsettling echoes of Marian's life - complete with tyrannical husband, unhelpful relatives, importunate lover, and romantic intrigue of her own - he's drawn into a present-day mystery just as baffling. What became of the historic photographs of Marian's that Eris claimed to have gotten from old Milo Esguard? Why is Bath bookseller Montagu Quisdan-Neve so interested in the photographs? What does Eris have to fear from Milo's nephew Niall? It's all a setup, of course, as everyone but Ian and the most credulous readers will long since have realized. But precious few will figure out who's behind the intricate plot, which plays to the most exquisitely paranoid fantasies. The archfiend's ingenuity eventually leaves reality far behind - but not before weaving a web equaled in its mind-boggling complexity only in Goddard's first ten novels (Beyond Recall, 1998, etc.). (Kirkus Reviews)

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.

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.