Just Finished Reading: Past Caring by Robert Goddard (FP: 1986)

London, 1910. Up and coming MP Edwin Strafford is at the pinnacle of his political career when, apparently out of the blue he tenders his resignation. Within hours the woman he is due to marry inexplicably rejects him and his life – both personal and professional – lies in tatters at his feet. Offered a face saving post on the island of Madeira he fades from history.

London, 70 years later. Down on his luck ex-history teacher Martin Radford is offered the chance of a lifetime. The man who bought Strafford’s house in Madeira has discovered an unpublished memoir that hints at the reasons for his sudden fall from grace and wants to know more. Unwilling to take time away from his business interests he hires Martin to do his leg work for him. The mission – to find out exactly why Strafford resigned his post as the youngest Home Secretary in the 20^th Century. Using the memoir as his guide Martin quickly discovers that an unlikely love affair between the Home Secretary and a young Suffragette is at the heart of things. But as he digs deeper and asks questions it appears that powerful people want a 70 year old mystery to remain dead and buried. As Martin slowly approaches the truth behind Strafford’s nightmare 48 hours all those years ago he begins to realise that not only reputations but lives are at stake.

This is my third Goddard book and his first novel. Part of my interest in it was to see how his style had developed from those early years. He explores his regular theme of uncovering the past with, I think, mixed results. The extracts from Strafford’s memoirs are very good indeed. I wonder if he wrote them originally as the idea for a book based wholly in 1910 but found that he couldn’t continue on that tack? It might explain the bolted-on feeling I had about the 1970’s investigation into the origins of his fall from grace. The historian Radford was, in all honesty, a pretty poor investigator and not exactly anything like a decent historian. For many reasons I found him oscillating between tedious and unbelievable to say nothing of annoying. Most of the other characters were either crude cardboard cut-outs (most especially Radford’s “love” interest Eve who I thought was terrible). Such character failings where particularly noticeable as they were in stark contrast to Strafford and his love interest Elizabeth who were both very well drawn indeed and totally believable. It seemed at times that the novel had been written by two different people and then edited together by a third. It was all very strange. Maybe the author was going after some effect – the different cultures of 1910 compared to 1970 maybe? – but whatever the reason was it escaped me. The ending caught me by surprise which was good as I didn’t really expect the hero to fail like that (I’m not really giving anything away with that revelation).

Overall this was a flawed but still at times very enjoyable novel. It certainly showcases many of the things Goddard perfects in his later novels (both of the one’s I’ve read so far have been solid and effective thrillers with more than a few moments of excellence). It’s also interesting – to me at least – to see the origins of a prolific author I look forward to reading in the years ahead. Reasonable.