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Chargement... Sight Unseen (original 2005; édition 2006)par Robert Goddard (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreSight Unseen par Robert Goddard (2005)
Books Read in 2017 (1,850) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. On a beautiful July afternoon in 1981 David Umber witnesses the kidnapping of a young girl. At the same time the child's sister is struck and killed by the kidnapper's van. In the ensuing confusion the kidnappers escape and are never heard from again. No ransom demand is ever presented for the child and she (or her body) is never located. Several years later a convicted sex offender confesses to the crime and is jailed, but there is some doubt that he was the kidnapper. The events of that July day profoundly affect David's life, his promising academic career is cut short. He marries the kidnapped child's nanny and they drift around Europe for several years before separating. Suffering depression, she commits suicide. Several years later when he is working in Prague in a dead-end job as a guide for British package tours, he is approached by a retired British policeman who wants to re-open the investigation into the kidnapping and David's wife's suicide. David reluctantly agrees, and for the next 400+ pages of the book he chases clues, is chased, beaten up and threatened with death. As he says at page 409: "It was too good to be true. It was too alluring to be anything but a trap. And maybe it was a trap deadlier than any of those he had so far blundered into. But he had agreed to go. And he would. He could not ignore the summons. He could not resist the bait. He could not avoid the trap." The surprise ending is saved for the very end of the book. It's a long slog to finish the book, but well worth the effort. There's an interesting parallel story about the "Junius Letters" that plays in the background. Some readers may feel that it's a meaningless distraction, but I found it interesting. All said, this is an action-filled suspense story, with a satisfying conclusion. Recommended. Not a bad Goddard, but it never really rises above being par-for-the-course. He's got a good game, but if you've read a few of these before, you've essentially read everything here before. Middle of the pack of the half-dozen of his I've read (so he is good enough that I keep coming back for more, eventually). Eén keer gelezen, maar dat is te lang geleden voor een goede recensie. Dus, eerst nog een keer lezen, dan horen jullie wat ik ervan vind. Intend to release this one at the meeting on Terschelling, so will read this in the course of next week. After a considerable time I re-read this book. This time, liked it a lot better than the first, when I compared it too much with [b:Verboden te lezen|10879478|Verboden te lezen |Robert Goddard|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1301195308s/10879478.jpg|1845145], a book by the same author. Now that I did not read them one after the other, I am able to talk about this book. There's a lot going on in this book. Occasionally I had trouble following the leaps of thought of certain characters, how he/she came to the conclusion .... I'm not saying that everything should always be written in great detail, but because there were some unexplained things, the story lines came together very late. As a reader I'd have preferred to know some reasons / causes earlier on in the story. Most likely I would have appreciated the book more. It is certainly not a bad book, but I have read more exciting / better books. The only scene that really stood out for me was the one near the end of the book, at the tain station. That was very well done. I won't say anything more.... ;-) aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Été 1981, Wiltshire. Assis à la terrasse d'un café, David Umber est témoin d'un fait divers. Sur la place du village, trois jeunes enfants accompagnés de leur baby-sitter sont victimes d'une agression. Tamsin, deux ans, est enlevée par un homme qui s'enfuit à bord d'un van. Tout se passe en quelques secondes. David, comme les deux autres témoins de la scène, n'a pas le temps de réagir.Printemps 2004, Prague. Après une histoire d'amour avortée avec la baby-sitter des enfants, David est contacté par l'inspecteur Sharp, responsable à l'époque de l'enquête. Hanté par cette affaire, celui-ci lui demande de l'accompagner en Angleterre pour faire toute la lumière sur la disparition de Tamsin. Alors que les deux hommes reprennent tous les faits, de nouvelles questions se posent sur la configuration des lieux, les témoins, la personnalité des victimes. Le drame cache encore ses secrets et ce nouvel éclairage risque d'être meurtrier.Traduit de l'anglais par Maxime Berrée. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of “Junius,” the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide.
In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed “Junius” reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber’s denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit — and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.