Just Finished Reading: Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard

Stephen had always believed that his uncle, Eldritch Swan, had died during the Blitz. At least that’s what his parents had told him all these years. So he was more than a little surprised when his mother told him that his supposedly dead uncle was coming to stay with them for a while – after serving 36 years in an Irish jail for reasons unknown and unquestioned. The mystery deepens when, a few days after he arrives, a London lawyer offers him a job tracking down what happened to some missing Picasso paintings now believed to be fakes. With the aid of his younger, fitter, nephew to do all the running around Eldritch is determined to lay some of the ghosts in his past to rest - unless they decide that the past should stay buried along with Eldritch and his inquisitive nephew.

This was another of those random books I’ve been picking up in my local bookshop’s 3 for 2 offerings. It’s an ideal way to experiment with new authors or genres slightly outside of my normal reading comfort zone. Mostly I hit pay dirt. This was one of those examples. I’d never read anything by this author before but, after searching on Amazon, I discovered that he has written a considerable number of thrillers. From reading the blub on some of them it appears that a common theme is that of uncovering the past. This novel is basically split into two alternating stories. The present day – in 1976 – and the buried past – in 1940. As Eldritch reveals more and more it slowly becomes clear that his involvement in possible art theft goes much deeper and eventually explains why he spent so long in jail. Despite being just over 500 pages long the pages turned rather easily and the story hummed along at a good pace. Although I wasn’t exactly intellectually challenged at any point the story and the style were certainly entertaining enough to keep me reading late into the night on more than one occasion. This is a reasonably well written, often intriguing and highly visual thriller weaving together the desire to uncover past mysteries and the need to make things right. I have since picked up four more of the authors books and expect to be equally entertained by all of them. In no way a difficult read this should help the winter evenings pass quite nicely. Recommended.