Dying to Tell

Lance Bradley has been talked into beginning a search for his old friend Rupert Alder whose payments to his siblings has mysteriously stopped. He's not the only one searching for Rupe and things get complicated. His old employers believe him to be guilty of fraud. Clues point to events of 1963 including a mysterious death in Glastonbury, Lance's home town. But what could events of 1963 have to do with Rupe's disappearance?

I've always enjoyed Robert Goddard novels and I found this one to be an engrossing, entertaining mystery, with an excellent plot and brightened with some light humour.

As an audiobook this was very entertainingly performed: I enjoyed spending time with the protagonist, the villain was especially creepy, and the Japanese accents were great. But good acting can't save a half-baked story. Half-baked is exactly what I mean--it just wasn't finished. How in the world did Lance talk himself out of the mess at the end? What happened when Echo went to the police? And why did Rupe become a diabolical mastermind in the first place? That's the real mystery at the heart of this story. And it's never addressed.

Another cracking Goddard story, up with his best. The unwitting hero is talked into searching for an old friend, which takes him on a hair-raising trip to Japan, before the final denouement at Wilderness Farm near Glastonbury, which relates to events thirty years earlier. Very cleverly written with twists and turns throughout.

Lance Bradley, living the quiet life in a shop in Glastonbury, has lost touch with his old friend Rupert Alder. Rupe’s siblings, Win, Mil, and Howard, all a good deal older than Rupe, are dependent on him for their income, and their income has mysteriously dried up. Rupe seems to have disappeared and Win asks Lance for help in tracking him down. This is not an easy task and leads Lance around the world and back to headline-making events that occurred in the year that he and Rupe were born, 1963. A thriller with some very unexpected twists and turns.

Robert Goddard is a master of the mystery genre. Beware - if you read one of his books, you'll probably want to read them all 13 or 14 off the reel.

This one, like several other RG stories, starts in modern England. It's a fast-moving tale of business fraud moving between London, Berlin, Tokyo and San Francisco.

Read it once and I remember I liked it. Will have to read it again to remember exactly what this book was all about and write a proper review.

Intend to release it at the meeting on Terschelling, so will be reading this one this week.

Apart from a few pages, I did finish this book (train and ferry time are sooo good for reading books!)
And I liked it. Re-reading it after a long period of time did not really ring a bell for the contents or the story line of this book. In itself that already says a lot, because usually I remember after reading one or two pages. Not this time.

So, reading it, I liked it, but it was not really a WOW. What annoyed me most was the never ending repetition of events. Maybe not exactly the same, but close enough show more to make it feel like a repetition to me. Lance is going out on a search for his best friend from childhood and gets himself into all kinds of trouble. Travels around the globe in the trail of Rube, but he finds nothing but people who want to kill him (and his temporary partners in search) and people who die or refuse to tell what the big secret was that was written down in the letter Rupe has stolen.
I guess that is an important part of the book, the reason why the story goes like it does, but I got impatient when the search went on and nothing was revelaed but the bits and pieces the main character puts together from the information he gathers along the way.

All in all I found it a bit disappointing. show less

Fairly interesting mystery with more plot than characterisation.