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| Found Wanting | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Goddard
Publisher: Bantam Press
Category: Book
Buy Used: £9.00
New (7) from £9.11
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 97097
Media: Paperback
Edition: Airport / Export ed
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0593060245
EAN: 9780593060247
ASIN: 0593060245
Publication Date: September 11, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Not top 10 Goddard October 16, 2008
I've read them all and love lots. Found Wanting starts OK as it chases through Europe in typical Goddard style but the last 80 or so pages? What the heck is going on? Very confusing and at the end of the marathon escapade you are so exhausted trying to understand all the family dynamics and intertwined history, you don't care anymore - just want to be over with it.And the guy (hero) gets the girl, who he thought was murdered earlier in the book.C'mon.......is happy ever after still in fashion?
If you like Goddard try R.J Ellory, particularly ' A Quiet Belief in Angels' for a starter.
 Reliable Robert (as opposed to a Great Goddard) October 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Robert Goddard is one of the few authors whom I pre-order in hardback irrespective of price.
He's a master storyteller and adept at ending chapters at a climatic point.
For me, what makes this one a 'reliable Robert' and not a 'great Goddard' is its european setting. I'm not a great traveller outside of the UK and as a result I find it difficult to connect with the european settings and their unusually spelt placenames. This one also has quite a few characters and at one point I was confused as to who was who, forcing me to reread a chapter (no great hardship) just to clarify in my mind who everyone was. Again the foreign spelt names didn't ease the confusion.
His British based novels are easier for me to identify with, 9 times out of 10, because I have been to the places where they are set. I know from these novels that his attention to detail when describing places is excellent, and therefore I assume that the european based novels are subject to just as high a level of detail.
If you're a hardened fan, you'll enjoy the book and no doubt devour it quickly, as they're meant to be enjoyed. If you're new to Robert Goddard, I'd be tempted to say read this, and then read "Into The Blue", "Hand in Glove", "Sight Unseen" or "Play to the End". That way your experience of this author will improve.
Have I missed the point? October 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I did not understand the ending! Did Tolmar Aksden have Romanov blood or not or wasn't this central to the plot after all? I read the book in Iceland which helped to make the northern setting of the story particularly vivid, absorbing and enjoyable but left me frustrated and wondering if I was asking the right questions after all.
 Formulaic and lazy. Only good for a really long flight. October 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is a while since I read a Goddard novel, and this reminded me of all the reasons why I stopped. I finished it only because I was jetlagged and wide awake, with nothing else to get me through a night in Hong Kong. The Goddard formula has simply worn out.
The protagonist is like virtually every other Goddard hero: middle-aged, in a rut, romantically unconnected, unprepared for the challenges ahead, but then unexpectedly resourceful when times get tough. He will also find romance along the way. There is a lame attempt to make this a surprise, but it is screamingly obvious nonetheless.
There are far too many characters, both past and present, and their behaviour and motivations are rarely plausible. Conversations are preposterous. The plot lumbers through the cities of Northern Europe towards the inevitable one-on-one showdown with the villain. The book ends with a feeble wordplay on the title (one of the characters is called 'Wanting'.)
There is also a lack of attention to detail. When the hero is trapped in the boot of a Mercedes, he hears a whirring sound which is explained as the electric aerial. Modern cars haven't had self-extending aerials for years. In fact, Goddard seems to have a problem with cars. In an earlier novel (I forget which) a character drove a Bentley at least 20 years before the first one was created.
On the plus side, the basic research around the Romanovs and what became of them after the Ekaterinburg massacre seems to be quite thorough, and probably could have formed the basis of a passable thriller, but that is not what is delivered.
Avoid. If you want some enjoyable hokum for a journey, then try Dan Brown's 'Deception Point'. It is a modern conspiracy thriller that has nothing to do with Da Vinci, and bowls along with sufficient pace that you don't notice the flaws until you have finished.
 Left me wanting.....a bit more. October 6, 2008
It's certainly true that the books of Robert Goddard have taken a downward spiral in the last few years. Maybe it's his fairly prolific output - 20 books in virtually as many years - or it could be that his format of historical and past events invariably having a deadly impact on the present is becoming a bit tired. Either way, as an avid fan, to my mind only 1 in 3 of his recent books has come anywhere close to the excellence of his earlier work.
This latest novel follows the fortunes and misfortunes of one Richard Eusdon, disillusioned civil servant (aren't they all?) who is asked to courier some valuable items in a locked briefcase and deliver it to his terminally ill friend Marty Hewitson in Europe. A simple task? No such luck. Eusdon is very quickly embroiled in a frantic and life threatening jaunt through Scandinavia, by turns in pursuit of and trying to escape from a variety of villains, and at the same time trying to unravel the mystery of the briefcase contents. This much we know - a lot of people want to get their hands on it, and it's in some way linked to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family, executed (or were they??) by Bolsheviks in 1917. As usual there is the combination of real historical figures and made-up characters - fact interwoven with fiction, and on more than one occasion the reader is tempted to thumb through the history books to find out which is which.
So is this book a disappointment or a return to form? The truth is it's somewhere in between. It was the first Goddard book in a while that I found very difficult to put down - it's a page turner, and it moves at an unstoppable pace. In addition to this, it aroused my interest to find out more about the Romanov dynasty and in particular, Anna Anderson, the most famous and allegedly most plausible of the so-called "Anastasia claimants" - women purporting to be the Tsar's daughter, having escaped the family massacre. I'm sure all this interest would please the author and is part of his motivation for including the historical elements as he does.
On the downside though, Goddard's strength has always been that he brings a very complex plot to a satisfactorily simple resolution. All loose ends are tied, all questions answered. This is definately not the case here. After a long night's reading, the ending seemed very confusing and unneccesarily convoluted, and Like a previous reviewer, I found myself trawling back through the book afterwards to try and put all the pieces together - without, I have to say, much success. Too many characters are introduced (often with the same surname) too late in the game, and I found myself wishing I could get a look at the family tree diagram that our protagonist finds on a wall during his adventure. Moreover, the reader is left wondering if the secret at the heart of the story really would be considered by anyone, important enough to warrant its relatively high body count. Who really stands to lose anything by its discovery? Or was this one of the many things I felt I had missed.
One final note. I had my suspicions that this book had been completed before some very recent real-life developments in the Romanov saga, and wondered if Goddard's ending might be scuppered as a result. I don't want to give away too much about this, but suffice to say, as it turned out, these developments were included, cleverly interwoven in the story and indeed their authenticity questioned sufficiently as to leave the reader suitably intrigued. All in all ,a good read. But yet again, not of his best.
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