The resolution was handled just right, leaving a question mark with one character in the final moments. The history researcher at the center of the story was flawed, and proved himself slightly unscrupulous or at least pretty gullible at one point, but pulls himself together before it’s all over. The characters are well thought out and feel real to me. It’s constructed like a puzzle, and Goddard gives us the pieces in a manner that we can work it out along with and sometimes ahead of the other players.
It’s not a thriller but it is a mystery, very complex. The narrative is liberally dotted with familiar names from Edwardian parliamentary politics, and I did have to pay attention to keep up with political issues that I had only a passing familiarity with. Suffice it to say that there are few truly good people involved, and they are put upon badly by the self-serving villains whose bad deeds flow into and escalate over six decades, erupting when a young history researcher is given a commission to look into a memoir found in an old villa. As with my prior outing with Goddard, I must work at not giving away any of the plot as spoilers would be difficult to avoid. That is a vast understatement in this tangled web of deceit, double-dealing and revenge. At one point of this story, the protagonist is advised “nothing is as it seems”.
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