Customer Reviews

Sight Unseen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this to be a fascinating book, albeit at times, both confusing and exciting. Twenty something years previously, a small girl was kidnapped and presumed murdered, from a henge of standing stones in Avebury. Her sister was killed when she ran on to the road in an attempt to stop the car, leaving the children's nanny to take the blame for the whole affair. Years later, the nanny was thought to have suicided but her former husband, historian David Umber recieves a call from the now retired police Chief Inspector, George Sharpe, who was in charge of the kidnapping case, to ask his help in reopening the inveatigation. It's a story with many characters and many threads, which are so interwoven that, at times, it seemed to bog down under such a wealth of detail, and then, just when I found the going becoming a bit tedious, the author zooms you back with an exciting lead. It's clever writing, bound together with genuine historical facts about an 18th century political polemicist, Junius, whose writings are documented. It's a good read but not for those with a short attention span.

In the summer of 1981 near the Avebury Neolithic henge circle, a woman walks with three children; a nine or ten years old boy and a seven years old girl are slightly ahead of the adult and the third child is a toddler. Suddenly a man grabs the infant whose sister reacts instantly and gives chase while the nanny stares in revulsion. The kidnapper jumps into a van, runs over his seven years old pursuer, and flees with his catch.

Historian David Umber witnessed the horror over twenty-five years ago in which Tamsin Hall was abducted and her older sister Miranda killed. David eventually married the stunned nanny but his wife never moved on from the shock that initially bound them until she finally committed suicide filled with guilt that she was negligent in her diligence.

Retired Wiltshire Chief Inspector Sharp informs David he received an anonymous letter with clues to what happened on that fatal day in '81. The letter focuses on the true identity of an eighteenth century political meddler known as Junius, who happens to be the subject of Umber's Ph.D. research. David begins to reconsider his wife's suicide and wonders if someone murdered her to further bury the truth. The historian and the former cop team up to follow the new leads to hopefully uncover a murderous kidnapper.

If not the best, Robert Goddard has to be one of the top five suspense writers today. With exhilarating works like BORROWED TIME, HAND IN GLOVE, and now SIGHT UNSEEN, Mr. Goddard consistently entertains with exciting tales that are plausible and gripping. His current thriller will hook the audience from the opening 1981 sequence and throughout until the final present day confrontation; thus another great thriller from a genre grandmaster.

Harriet Klausner

One of the better Robert Goddard books. Innovative and very well constructed plot that holds the reader's interest. Well written, atlhough sometimes a bit too detailed on some historical or geographical details. Worth your time if you're looking for some quality entertainment literature.

"Sight Unseen" needs a road map to explain the complicated geography. And a telephone book of the characters. And a chronological outline of the events. Maybe then, with those aids, the reader can try to figure out the ephemeral characters, the shadowy motives, and the arch enemy who never really appears except to provide the deus ex machina at the end. Reading this novel is analogous to working a jigsaw puzzle. The problem is, there's no pretty, complete, satisfying picture to reward you for the work you've done.

I read my first Robert Goddard book a few weeks ago, Past Caring, which I thought was wonderfully well-written, and thoroughly enjoyed. Inside the cover was a blurb for "Sight Unseen", showing the standing stones at Avebury. Since I've been to Avebury 4 or 5 times, and love sitting outside at the Red Lion(when it's not raining), I immediately reserved it at my local library. The first few pages set a scene of the death of a young girl, and the abduction of her sister from in fromnt of the Red Lion. Once those few pages shift to 2004 to Budapest and thence back to Avebury, and suddenly the wheels start wobbling and totally fall off. The muddled plot just made me angry at times, and while I'll certainly give Goddard's books another try, I won't recommend this to anyone. I'm glad I didn't buy this, but I'm sorry my local library spent money on it.

And why would Amazon recommend a tag of "british murder mystery 1920s"? This has nothing to do with the 1920's!

interesting for its historical and factual details. but the plot was so hard to follow. throughout the whole book I felt like I was just on the verge of "understanding". So many twists and turns that I didn't ever feel like I knew enough to formulate a guess as to what had happenned or even understand what was happenning in the investigation. decent ending and epilogue.

This is vintage Robert Goddard -- there are a lot of plot twists and shades of both the past and the present throughout. What makes Goddard an interesting writer is that he takes risks; and even though some elements of those risks can fall flat, his books are suspenseful and highly entertaining.

When he was a 22-year-old Ph.D. student, David Umber witnessed a terrible crime, the abduction of a two-year-old girl and the murder of the girl's older sister. The crime was never satisfactorily solved, and now, more than twenty years later, Umber is invited to take a stab at unraveling the mystery that has since haunted him. He teams up with a policeman, now retired, who was involved in the original investigation, get scary people worried enough to put him in the hospital, and winds up discovering that nothing about what he witnessed that day was quite what it seemed. Moreover, it turns out that the crimes were somehow connected to the research he was conducting at the time into the identity of an 18th-century letter writer who called himself Junius, so that figuring out who was behind the abduction requires that he leap back into his abandoned research.

I've read a number of Robert Goddard's novels in the past. They're complex, tightly-plotted page-turners. Sight Unseen is similar to the others in style, but this time I was left unsatisfied. The plot is a little too complex. By the end I didn't really care what all the fuss was about Junius' identity, and a few days after finishing the book I'd be hard-pressed to provide details about the bad guys' machinations. I had trouble remembering the names of fairly important characters, so that every time they were re-introduced--as late as twenty pages from the end--I didn't have a clue who they were. Maybe all that is just a sign that I'm a careless reader, but in this case I think the story was just not interesting enough to make me care about following it. A final complaint: the use of the ridiculous nickname "Shadow Man" to refer to Umber ("umber" means "shadow" in Latin, get it?). As in, "'What are we going to do, Shadow Man?'" Who would talk like this?! No one, particularly since there's no reason given in the text why the characters who refer to him in this way would choose to do so (i.e., that they refer to lots of people by nickname, or they need to avoid using his real name).

-- Debra Hamel

I'm with Mollymag. Unlikely scenario, boringly told.

This is a 23 y/o cold case being rivived by a retired Chief Inspector.

The Janius (18th century political critic/writer) connection doesn't gel.

nice and suspenseful. a little unusual and you don't quite know where it will go next. definately worth picking up if you're int the genre.