Found Wanting - Robert Goddard

I'm pretty sure I've only read one of Goddard's books before, Never Come Back. It was. . . OK, I think. It didn't give me any reason to expect Found Wanting to be great, and it wasn't.

Which doesn't mean it was bad, I may simply be tired of books about secrets emerging from the past that everyone is willing to kill for. I gave up on the other Goddard book my dad sent along, Beyond Recall, within 40 pages. I never find it to be a good sign when I have to set a book down to do other things, then find I have no interest in picking it back up again.

In Found Wanting, the secret has something to do with Marty Hewitson's grandfather, who was a police officer on Isle of Wight, and claims to have saved the Russian royal family from an assassination attempt in the early 20th century. Marty's found some letters belonging to Clem that might support that, letters that are worth quite a bit to a lot of people. But Marty's dying of a brain tumor, so he calls his ex-wife Gemma, and asks her to bring them to him. She wusses out, and hands the task over to Marty's best friend (and her other ex-husband), Richard.

And Richard promptly finds himself caught in a series of twists, lies, double-crosses, switches, and attempts on his life. No one is being straight with him, least of all Marty, but Richard sticks with it to the end. Trying first finish the task, then just to piece together what it is everyone wants so badly, and finally, to see justice done, somehow.

The book was a frustrating read because I kept wanting Richard to just go home. Marty not only wasn't telling him everything, but was generally using him as a decoy, letting Richard walk out there like a sucker while Marty's carrying out his real plan somewhere else. Goddard raises the possibility that this is due to Marty's thought process being off because of the tumor, but undercuts it by having Richard note Marty has always been an unreliable person. I can appreciate Richard wanting to help his oldest friend. It's an admirable quality, and probably why I wanted him to get out while he could. I like Richard. He handles things a lot more calmly then he has to*, so I wanted him to make it out OK. At a certain point, I gave up on that. He was too far in, things were getting too dire to simply run home and hope to put it all behind him. Until that point, though, I was frustrated that he wouldn't wise up and leave.

Anyway, it's a very quick read, and the mystery isn't too hard to piece together, depending on how much you know about Tsar Nicholas the 2nd's kids. I figured it out 3/4 of the way through, which isn't bad by my standards.

* There's a point where Gemma calls him and berates him for not being in a certain place to take care of something. He was short with her, but he needed to unload. Point out he shouldn't even be here, Marty called her, and if she doesn't like how he handles things, she can damn well grow a spine and do it herself next time. Alas, it was not to be.