Showing results by author "Robert Goddard" in All Categories

Why should distinguished Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Straford resign at the height of his career? Why does the woman he loves so suddenly reject him? Why, 70 years later, should people go to such lengths to prevent the truth coming out?

Harry Barnett, a middle-aged failure, leads a shabby existence. He is reduced to caretaking a friend's villa on the island of Rhodes and working in a bar to earn his keep. Then a guest at the villa - a young woman he had instantly warmed to - disappears on a mountain peak. Under suspicion of her murder, Harry becomes obsessed by the mystery that has changed his life and begins to trace back the movements and encounters that led to the moment where she vanished into the blue.

It is January 1721. London is reeling from the effects of the greatest financial scandal of the age, the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. William Spandrel, a penniless mapmaker, is offered a discharge of his debts by his principal creditor, Sir Theodore Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, on one condition: he must secretly convey an important package to a friend of Janssen's, Ysbrand de Vries, in Amsterdam.

Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances. Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. A businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son offers what appears to be a straightforward assignment. But she should have known that the simplest cases are never really simple at all. Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy.

In The Corners of the Globe, Max is sent on his first mission for legendary German spy Fritz Lemmer, the very man who claims responsibility for the murder of Max's father. As Max travels to Scotland's remote Orkney Islands to collect a mysterious gray file from a German captain, he must keep his true allegiances in mind. Further complications arise when a fellow tourist recognizes Max from their school days and threatens to blow his cover.

Umiko Wada has had enough excitement in life. With an overbearing mother and her husband recently murdered, she just wants to keep her head down. As a secretary to a private detective, her life is pleasantly filled with coffee runs and paperwork. That is, until her boss takes on a new case. A case that is surrounded by shadows. A case that means Wada will have to leave Tokyo and travel to London.

On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, William Trenchard sits smoking his pipe in the garden of his comfortable family home. When the creak of the garden gate heralds the arrival of an unexpected stranger, he is puzzled but not alarmed. He cannot know the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear.

When Harry Barnett is informed that his son is in hospital in a diabetic coma, he is certain that there must be some mistake, since he does not have a son. But he soon discovers that he does. David Venning was a brilliant mathematician, and his tragic condition is taken to be the result of an accident or a suicide attempt.

On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls suddenly and desperately in love with a woman he meets by pure chance, Marian Esguard. Back in England, he separates from his wife and goes to meet Marian at an agreed rendezvous, only to hear her tell him on the telephone that she will not, after all, be coming. Then she vanishes from his life as mysteriously as she entered it. Who and where is the woman he met and fell in love with in Vienna?

On a stifling afternoon at police HQ in Algiers, Superintendent Taleb, coasting towards retirement, with not even an air-conditioned office to show for his long years of service, is handed a ticking time bomb of a case that will take him deep into Algeria's troubled past and its fraught relationship with France. To his dismay, he is assigned to work with Agent Hidouchi, an intimidating representative of the country's feared secret service, who makes it clear she intends to call the shots.

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States.

On ne sait jamais ce que le passé nous réserve. 1911. Geoffrey Staddon, jeune architecte plein d'élans et d'espoir, vient de concevoir une magnifique demeure, Clouds Frome. Et il est tombé amoureux fou de la femme de son commanditaire, Consuela Caswell, une jeune Brésilienne perdue dans un mariage de convenance. Alors qu'il lui a promis de s'enfuir avec elle, il l' abandonne à son triste sort, préférant se consacrer pleinement à ses ambitions professionnelles.

The Treaty of Versailles has finally been signed, officially ending the World War I peace negotiations, and the action shifts east to Tokyo, where a team assembled at Max's behest anxiously awaits his arrival on the docks. Max had arrived in Paris soon after the end of the Great War to investigate the suspicious death of his father, a British diplomat named Sir Henry, and is soon plunged into a treacherous game of cat and mouse with the people behind his father's death.

1882. St John's Wood. Lorsqu'un homme se présente aux portes de la maison de Constance Trenchard, celle-ci ne se doute pas que sa vie va être bouleversée. L'homme prétend en effet être Sir James Davenall, son ancien fiancé, disparu une semaine avant leur mariage et que tout le monde croit mort depuis dix ans. Si Constance le reconnaît, toute la famille Davenall, en particulier sa mère et son frère, Hugo, héritier du prestigieux domaine de Cleave Court, prétend qu'il s'agit d'un imposteur.

Four years of horrific fighting have finally ended on the battlefield, but in the spring of 1919, Paris is filled with delegates from around the world who are still trying to hammer out the terms of peace. One such delegate is British diplomat Sir Henry Maxted, in charge of liaising with Brazilians regarding seized ships. But before a deal is reached, Sir Henry turns up dead outside a Montparnasse apartment building, apparently having fell from the roof.

Recovering from the recent tragedy of his wife's death in a cliff fall, Tony Sheridan goes to stay with his sister-in-law, Lucy, and her husband at their new home - Otherways - a strange circular, moated house. Disturbed by memories of his wife and a growing attraction to Lucy, Sheridan is also troubled by weird and vivid dreams. And as he and Lucy embark on a secret and passionate affair, Sheridan begins uncovering the truth about Otherways.

Harry Barnett thought he had left his military career behind, so he is startled when two figures from his past turn up on his doorstep after 50 years. An old friend has organised the reunion to end all reunions: a weekend in the Scottish castle where the ex-comrades took part in a psychological experiment many years before. They haven't seen each other since. As they set off on their all-expenses-paid jaunt to Aberdeen, the old friends are in high spirits. But the cheerful atmosphere is quickly shattered by the apparent suicide of one of their party.

What value can be put on a human mind? How Joe Roberts does what he does is a mystery. He has a brain that seems able to outperform a computer. To a games company like Venstrom that promises big profits if his abilities can be properly exploited. So they send Nicole Nevinson to track him down and make him an offer too good to refuse.

High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she’s escaped. But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur Jack Harkness.

Cornouailles, 1981. Chris Napier revient pour la première fois depuis des années à Tredower House, le domaine familial, acquis entre les deux guerres par son grand-oncle Joshua, pour assister au mariage de sa nièce. Au beau milieu de la cérémonie, Nick Lanyon, l'ami d'enfance de Chris, fait irruption et annonce, à la surprise de tous, que son père, Michael Lanyon, exécuté pour avoir commandité le meurtre de Joshua en 1947, était innocent. Il en a la preuve.