Caught in the Light [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Robert Goddard (Author), Michael Kitchen (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2003

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?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've read any of Robert Goddard's topnotch psychological thrillers (including Beyond Recall, Out of the Sun, and Hand in Glove), you know that he specializes in setting up an impossible situation and then showing how it is in fact diabolically possible. Caught in the Light is no exception.

When photographer Ian Jarrett, on assignment in snowy Vienna, meets and falls in love with a mysterious woman named Marian Esguard, the sex is terrific and their future back in England looks happy. Jarrett walks out on his wife and 15-year-old daughter and goes off to await his new lover. But she doesn't show up, and Jarrett decides to track her down. In the process he unearths an out-of-this-world mystery: Marian may well be a ghost from the past (and a ghost with a grudge). That would certainly explain why none of the pictures of Marian come out. During the 19th century, a woman of the same name claimed to have discovered the techniques of modern photography, but she never received the credit for it.

Quickly--perhaps a little too quickly--other people appear on the scene to explain the unexplainable. There's the London psychotherapist who has been treating Eris Moberly (the woman who calls herself Marian Esguard); there's a slick financier with a shadowy background and unknown motives. But despite these secondary characters popping out of the woodwork, Goddard is a master craftsman: he lures us into his fun house expertly, then guides us through the dark tunnels, cackling madly. An added bonus is a reverence for the history of photography, which lights up the story. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

British writer Goddard has achieved a steady readership here with his atmospheric novels (Into the Blue; Beyond Recall) in which characters unravel a mystery in their pasts. Photography illuminates his new narrative as it spirals from a simple tale of a lonely man searching for his lover to a complex study of obsessions spanning two centuries. While on assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett becomes enamored with a woman who calls herself Marian Esguard. He returns to England to inform his wife and daughter that he is leaving them, but his next rendezvous with his paramour never occurs; she disappears, and it turns out that his photographs have been exposed and ruined. His personal and professional life destroyed, Ian pursues his lover, learning that she is a fraud who has claimed the identity of a 19th-century gentlewoman with a talent for chemistry who may have discovered photography decades before the accredited Fox Talbot. Propelled by a psychiatrist with secrets of her own, Ian unmasks murder, deception, blackmail and theft over many decades, while reconsidering his own life as well. With more twists and bumps than an English country road, the convoluted plot swerves from modern mystery to Regency romance to psychological thriller, with Ian experiencing danger and tragedy and bitter regret. What gives cohesion to the story is the lovingly detailed account of the art and science of photography. Goddard takes us to the other side of the lens, showing how composition, light and story can unite to make a great photograph, then traces the history of the process with stops along the way at the 1851 World's Fair, a corporate magnate's London headquarters and Sotheby's. Whether the mystery woman is a heroine reincarnated or evil incarnate proves less compelling than how the magic of photography triumphs over time.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Chivers Audio Books (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0754087824
• ISBN-13: 978-0754087823
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 7.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,841,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling: even in the light things are not what they seem, July 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Caught in the Light (Hardcover)

The first Goddard I read. The metaphor of light reflected from his previous novels - Painting the Darkness, Into the Blue, In Pale Batallions. Light even plays an important role in the cover drawings in the Corgi editions of Borrowed Time and Out of the Sun. A web of intrigue enters the life of a photographer, and all he meet are eventually seen, in another light, to be working for his downfall. Worth a transit through Gatwick or Heathrow to buy, but now easily available through Amazon. As with other Goddards, the people seem "normal," and that is what makes the possibility of hidden forces reaching out and turning life upside down seem so convincing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars CAUGHT IN A BLINDING LIGHT OF INTRIGUE, May 15, 2007

By 

Red Rock Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Caught in the Light (Hardcover)

This is a novel of love, loss, deception and amateur detection. Part ghost story, part historical mystery with a visit to the magical beginnings of early photography thrown in for good measure.

Goddard has outdone himself in executing this intricate suspense filled plot loaded with double-crosses, theft and murder as well as the deeper themes of love and loss.

Goddard's talent is such that this acrostic like "puzzle" engages the reader completely....and each time you think you have the solution you are given yet another piece of the puzzle that takes you in another direction.

Although I sometimes became infuriated with our "hero", Ian Jarrett, wanting to shout out, "Why don't you just use the phone and call rather than going there", the resolution of the story came as quite a heartbreaking suprise.

I do not like to give long, in-depth descriptions of the story (why buy the book and read it if every plot point his been disclosed in a review). Suffice to say, readers will not be disappointed and will find themselves caught in the light of Goddard's storytelling genius.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, November 15, 2005

By 

M. A. Sajeev "KIDSDOC" (LOWER COLLYMORE ROCK, ST MICHAEL Barbados) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Caught in the Light (Hardcover)

Blending the past and present seamlessly, Goddard had written a brilliant novel that keeps the reader guessing from one page to the next. The totally believable initial encounter between Jarret and Marian sets the stage for the events that follow.How does one explain a physical and torridly sexual tryst with an enchanting woman who lived in another century? This is where Goddard's skill lies--he spins a sensitive and thrilling romance where it all seems so very possible.