This was the first Robert Goddard I ever read and I was hooked. so complex, so mysterious yet ultimately very satisfying.
The beginning and the middle were 4 stars, but the last third of the book went slightly downhill, so I am giving "Caught in the Light" a 3 star rating. Would go 3 and a half if I could.
I've read it before - ages ago and it sent me on a pilgrimage of Robert Goddard novels - I've just bought a copy and am currently re-reading it - with as much enjoyment as first time around but in a more relaxed mode cause I know I'm in for a treat!.
Vintage Goddard: multiple identities, historical connections, irreversible mistakes with a load of suspenseful twists and turns.
More twists and turns than the average maze and you need to keep your wits about you not to lose the thread of the past versus the present. Finding the recordings of the imagined past very drawn out I started to lose momentum.
This is a great page-turner of a novel with a plot that twists through time and place. The intrigue and suspense that develops as a result of a moment's mistake made by the protagonist five years previous to the time period of the novel makes compelling reading.
This was the first Robert Goddard book I read, having searched him out following reading an interview with him in a magazine article. I remember being thrilled at the way the story twisted and turned, turning to my husband and saying, "you have to read this book!
I would really like to know who borrowed this book and did not return it! The dust jacket, forlorn and empty, stares at me reproachfully from time to time.
I'd read one Robert Goddard book before when I spotted this one on a shelf in a charity shop, when I read the back I knew I had to buy it, because it seemed so relevant to my life.
The books main thems are: photography (main character is a photographer and so am I), the invention of photography and past life regression set around a thriller/crime basis.
One of the best thrillers in a long time. Goddard is brilliant.
3,5/5
Ce thriller etait a la fois ultra bien construit, haletant, intrigant, tres efficace, plein de surprises et d'action, mais aussi un peu trop long et tres tire par les cheveux pour moi. J'y ai retrouve beaucoup de similitudes avec le film Vertigo / Sueurs Froides de Hitchcock (l'un de mes films preferes) mais le cote beaucoup plus sombre, ultra complexe et tarabiscote ne m'a pas convaincue: entre les noms etranges, et toutes les intrigues entremelees, il est arrive un moment ou je ne croyais plus vraiment a l'histoire (a partir des revelations dans la deuxieme moitie), les explications me paraissant peu realistes -- j'etais spectatrice mais pas impliquee.
Probably not one of his best, but Goddard is still miles above most thriller writers. First two-thirds of the book had me hooked, then the story became a bit unbelievable and finally I was taken in by the bitter end.
Clever interweaving of an unidentified 17th (18th ? don't have the book in front of me) century political letter-writer and a current day child abduction.
Great mystery and suspense, as is usual for Robert Goddard.
