FAULT LINE

A new novel from Robert Goddard is always a pleasure. Winner of an Edgar and the WH Smith Thumping Good Read awards, he has been master of the puzzle crime thriller for twenty-five years, and each new addition is as immaculately crafted as its predecessor.

Fault Line is an excellent example of this, as it peels away layer after layer from the central mystery, delving back into the secrets stemming from the 1960s in order to reveal the dark forces at work in the present.

When Jonathan Kellaway, on the point of retirement, is summoned to the presence of the former chairman of International Kaolins, Greville Lashley, he realises there is more to this than a routine assignment. He and Greville go back a long way. Over forty years earlier, a teenage Jonathan had been on a temporary work placement in the Cornish china clay industry; the company was run by Lashley and about to be taken over. There Jonathan met Lashley’s stepson Oliver – and his sister Vivien. Between them they were to change Jonathan’s life for ever. The tragedies and unexplained deaths of those years and those that followed have remained a closed book. Now Jonathan’s assignment from Lashley is to find out what happened to records missing from the company’s archives, but this pitchforks him into facing his past. Jonathan is determined to unravel its labyrinthine secrets, but discovery of the truth proves a dangerous path.

Fault Line is Robert Goddard at his most spell-binding. Don’t miss it.