Robert Goddard is one of the UK’s most popular and best selling authors, with some 20 novels to his name since the publication of Past Caring in 1986.
Crime thrillers are his oeuvre with the hero inevitably a white, middle-aged, middle-class everyman reluctantly sucked into the world of crime, murder and mayhem.
Literary fiction it is not, but there is no doubt Goddard is a master storyteller and regularly produces page-turning potboilers, English-style: 350 plus pages that can be rattled off in an afternoon or two.
Compared to Dan Brown in style if not storyline – his plots can be labyrinthine and at times over-wordy – Goddard predominantly sets his books in English market towns and rural settings.
Loved by Prime Ministers
Former British Prime Minister John Major, Conservative Member of Parliament for the (rural) seat of Huntingdon, listed Goddard with 19th century writer Anthony Trollope as his favourite novelists. Known as The Grey Man in the world of British politics, Major’s announcement in the early 1990s helped the novelist’s sales enormously in one market whilst definitely closing it in another!
Play to the End follows the true and trusted formula to great effect whilst playing homage to Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.
The story
Approaching his fiftieth birthday, actor Toby Flood arrives in Brighton for the final performances of Lodger in the Throat following a ten-week regional tour. The tour had not gone well, with a hoped-for West End transfer unlikely to eventuate.
Flood himself is a little washed-up, not quite fulfilling his early promise in television and film, but nevertheless a big enough name to receive star-billing on a production showing in the likes of Poole, Guildford, Newcastle and, finally, Brighton.
Unexpectedly, he receives a phone call from his estranged wife, Jenny. Living in the seaside resort, she is being stalked by a man Jenny believes is connected in some way to Flood.
So begins a quagmire of events that involves murder, corruption, cocaine, family feuds and, like Greene’s Brighton Rock, a showdown at Beachy Head, the south coast’s notorious suicide spot.
Play to the End is an entertaining crime thriller as Flood is driven by his determination to win back Jenny and prevent her at all costs from marrying local entrepreneur Roger Colborn. But what started out as an attempt to discredit the smooth-talking, debonair playboy unearths dastardly deeds in the family business and a cover-up of epic proportions.
Toby unwittingly unleashes the floodwaters that lead to a few red herrings but also revelations about the past and a present-day triple tragedy.
It’s hokum, it’s unchallenging, it’s fun.
Source
- Robert Goddard, Play to the End (Bantam Press, 2004)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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