Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard ★★☆☆☆

Conflicted as the Main Character

Fiction – Mystery/Thriller/Crime

320 Pages

Publication Date: December 26, 2006

“It began at Avebury.  But it did not end there”

When retired policeman George Sharp goes to Prague and attempts to convince David Umber to come back to London with him and look into the crime that brought Umber and his wife, Sally, together 23 years earlier Umber is more than a little skeptical.  Umber has tried to put that event and Sally, who died five years earlier in a supposed suicide, behind him.  But with so many unanswered questions haunting him and the urgings of an anonymous letter signed by the long dead Junius – the subject of Umber’s abandoned thesis - Umber decides to give Sharp a chance.  As they start back down the old familiar tracks, strange things occur and the investigation takes a turn neither of them could have expected. 

I found the lack luster writing style and uninspiring characters bothersome.  The characters tended to be flat and not very dynamic, especially when it came to the dialogue.  These two major factors niggled at me the whole way through the book.  What kept me going was the actual plot.  Some other reviews I read complained the plot was too complicated and hard to follow, frankly I don’t agree with them. The use of the Junius figure, an eighteenth-century polemicist known for his scathing letters on the British government, and the interest in finding out his real identity coupled with the twist and turns of the investigation was fascinating to me.  Goddard slowly doles out information so you aren’t quite sure what will happen in the end in a way I liked and he did eventually answer the questions haunting Umber.

I debated long and hard about my rating for this book and I just couldn’t bring myself to give it three stars.  A good book should not only have a good plot, but also decent writing and strong characters; which is why I only gave Sight Unseen two stars.  I do want to state, however, I haven’t completely written off Robert Goddard and plan on giving him another try at some later date when some of my dissatisfaction has bled off.

ISBN: 978-0440242802