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| Name to a Face | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Goddard
Publisher: Corgi Books
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £6.98 (100%)
New (35) from £0.30
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 3350
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0552152129
EAN: 9780552152129
ASIN: 0552152129
Publication Date: July 28, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 The book what he wrote October 28, 2008
What has happened to Robert Goddard's excellent mystery novels. The first seven of them were tour de force in the Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier vein, but now they have become replicas of "the play what I wrote in 20 minutes" by the late Ernie Wise (On the Morecambe and Wise show 1960s/1980s for those younger than 20)
The plots are thin, all very similar, and don't progress very quickly because the main characters spend most of the book charging up and down the countryside by train in pursuit of red herrings. British Rail and mobile phones figure larger than the story line in the present day novels, and if the setting is historical, they tear around Europe in coach and horses.
I haven't bothered to read Found Wanting because Name to a Face was so boring. I just skipped the pages to see who done it at the end, and at the end I wasn't much wiser. If he can't do better than this, he should give up writing altogether.
 An old-fashioned whodunnit October 21, 2008
This is the first Robert Goddard book I have read, though I have several others awaiting their turn. Whether this is, therefore, worse than the earlier ones I have no idea.
However, I did enjoy it. I'd say it was a typically old-fashioned English whodunnit. Plenty of clues, though not for Tim Harding who seems to gather his wits as the story unfolds. The reader is left in the dark as to exactly why all this is happening and it's not until nearing the end that the pieces fall into place.
Whether an old ossary box purported to contain the remains of King Edward II is reason enough to cause a lengthening list of dead bodies is not really the point. If you go along with the story, you'll move around Europe, flit back to Penzance and London and decide early on that the love interest will blossom in accordance with good old British traditions.
Now I've read this book, I think I know what to expect from the earlier ones, so I'll be picking up the next fairly soon.
Goddard is getting tired October 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have enjoyed many of Robert Goddard's books, with their many unexpected twists and turns, but his writing has now got to the stage where I know what to expect. I persevered with this story, but had it been a TV film, I would have been out of my seat and off to bed half way through.
However, compared to a lot of the books in this genre, Goddard is still up there with the best. Perhaps it is unfair of me to make the comparison with his previous works, as those were all so good.
A landscape gardener on the Cote d'Azur is asked by one of his clients to go to Cornwall and bid for a family heirloom which is up for auction following the death of his (the client's) uncle. From that point, mystery, intrigue and deception unravel in typical Goddard style. The historical backdrop adds a lot of colour to the story, which never approaches believable. Uncharacteristically, many of the twists and turns are either too predictable or just too far-fetched.
An enjoyable enough book, if you can't find anything better to read on your holiday.
 Anonymous October 6, 2008
It's hard to understand how a novelist can deteriorate as much from his early novels as this. This is an adequate pot-boiler of the kind you might pick up at random from the top 10 in any bookshop. But when compared with Goddard's best books, such as Take No Farewell and Into the Blue, it's almost as though it is written by a different author.
Where is all the period detail, character and emotional tension Goddard used to put into his books? Where is even one decent twist? Hayley Winter, to take just one example, is a cardboard character, who alternately acts out some old-man's fantasy and behaves,absurdly, as the greenest of journalists. The twist was ridiculously obvious virtually from the start. Then there is the sloppy, poor writing, with large tracts of dialogue with insufficient commentary. The couple of mistakes I happened to pick up, such as the East Kent Mercury mistakenly being called the Kentish Mercury, are, I suspect, symptomatic.
None of us expects Robert Goddard to be brilliant every time but it's so sad that all the signs here are that he can't now be bothered at all, whether from having too much money, boredom with writing or some problem in his life.
Good but don't read other spoiler reviews on here first! September 17, 2008
In spite of some unflattering reviews on here, I actually quite enjoyed this book, although it was somewhat spoiled for me by the fact that I read one of the other reviews on here which told me in the first couple of lines who the baddie was; not very clever to name the murderer, guaranteed to ruin the book for those of us who do want to read it.
I think Robert Goddard has a real skill for writing page turners, I've read a couple of his other books and if this is classed as a poorer one, then his others must be excellent.
Similar pattern to his others that I've read, single/widowed/divorced man charging all over the country/ world to discover answers to varying mysteries, usually with historical links, but easy to read, and enthralling. Maybe would have kept me guessing had I not read that review that spoiled it before I'd even started.
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