Robert Goddard - Found Wanting

reviewed by Barbara Simpson 26th Feb 09
As an avid reader of Robert Goddard's books, I was delighted to pick up his new novel. For anyone who hasn't read his work, Robert Goddard is a master of thriller-writing. His plots are extraordinarily convouted, drawing the reader further & further into the story - usually based around someone who is an unwitting pawn in an horrific game of chess.
Found Wanting begins in the usual way - Richard Eusden, a civil servant, is having coffee on his way to work when his ex-wife turns up with a message from a childhood frined now dying. In a matter of a few hours, Richard is on his way to Brussels to collect a briefcase but of course, nothing can ever be that straightforward and soon he is criss-crossing Europ from Belgium to Germany to Denmark, before ending up in Finland for the culmination of the story. Each part of his journey puts him in more danger and the descriptions of northern Europe in the depths of winter add to the bleakness of the tale, involving as it does the deaths of the Russian Royal Family in 1917, the rumours that Princess Anastasia escaped from the massacre, the whereabouts of the Tsar's lost fortune and the overwhelming desire of a reclusive, immendsely powerful and ruthless Finnish businessman to have his questions answered.
The research is meticulous, the writing excellent but I have to admit that by the end I felt bogged down and didn't really care one way or the other - too many Scandinavian and Russian names and one or two really credibility stretching coincidences.
This is very disappointing as most of Robert Goddard's books are quite brilliant, although his previous novel 'Name to a Face' also left me feeling rather let down - a double disappointment as that one concerned the legend of Sir Cloudisly Shovell's ring and was partly set in Scilly.
To sum up it lived up to its title!