Voir les résultats écrits par "Robert Goddard"

1882. St John's Wood. Lorsqu'un homme se présente aux portes de la maison de Constance Trenchard, celle-ci ne se doute pas que sa vie va être bouleversée. L'homme prétend en effet être Sir James Davenall, son ancien fiancé, disparu une semaine avant leur mariage et que tout le monde croit mort depuis dix ans. Si Constance le reconnaît, toute la famille Davenall, en particulier sa mère et son frère, Hugo, héritier du prestigieux domaine de Cleave Court, prétend qu'il s'agit d'un imposteur.

Quinquagénaire alcoolique et désenchanté, Harry Barnett vit depuis de nombreuses années sur l'île de Rhodes, où il s'occupe de la villa d'un de ses amis, un homme politique anglais. Quand Heather Mallender arrive à la villa pour se remettre d'un drame personnel, Harry est vite attiré par la jeune femme. Mais, lors d'une balade en montagne, tout bascule : Heather disparaît sans laisser de traces et Harry est soupçonné par la police grecque de l'avoir assassinée.

Fin des années 1990. Leonora Galloway entreprend un voyage en France avec sa fille. Toutes deux ont décidé d'aller à Thiepval, près d'Amiens, au Mémorial franco-britannique des soldats décédés durant la bataille de la Somme. Le père de Leonora est tombé au combat durant la Première Guerre mondiale, mais la date de sa mort gravée sur les murs du mémorial, le 30 avril 1916, pose problème. Leonora est en effet née près d'un an plus tard.

On ne sait jamais ce que le passé nous réserve. 1911. Geoffrey Staddon, jeune architecte plein d'élans et d'espoir, vient de concevoir une magnifique demeure, Clouds Frome. Et il est tombé amoureux fou de la femme de son commanditaire, Consuela Caswell, une jeune Brésilienne perdue dans un mariage de convenance. Alors qu'il lui a promis de s'enfuir avec elle, il l' abandonne à son triste sort, préférant se consacrer pleinement à ses ambitions professionnelles.

1977 : Martin Radford, jeune historien londonien dont la carrière universitaire a été brisée par un scandale, arrive sur l'île de Madère. Il y rencontre Leo Sellick, un millionnaire sud-américain, qui habite une superbe villa, naguère propriété du mystérieux Edwin Strafford, mort en 1951. Homme politique de premier ordre, promis à un brillant avenir, Edwin Strafford a été en 1908, à l'âge de 32 ans, ministre de l'intérieur du cabinet Asquith, aux côtés de Lloyd George et de Churchill, avant de démissionner brutalement en 1910 et de quitter la vie politique sans explication aucune pour disparaître dans l'anonymat.

Été 1981. Alors qu'il attend à la terrasse d'un café, David Umber est témoin d'un fait divers qui va bouleverser son existence. Trois jeunes enfants qui se promenaient avec leur baby-sitter sont victimes d'une terrible agression. Un homme kidnappe Tamsin, deux ans, et s'enfuit à bord de son van. Alors qu'elle essaye de s'interposer, la petite Miranda, sept ans, est percutée par le véhicule. Tout se passe en quelques secondes. David, comme les deux autres témoins de la scène, n'a pas le temps de réagir.

On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, William Trenchard sits smoking his pipe in the garden of his comfortable family home. When the creak of the garden gate heralds the arrival of an unexpected stranger, he is puzzled but not alarmed. He cannot know the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear.

High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she’s escaped. But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur Jack Harkness. 

Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendant of the last Emperors of Byzantium, lives alone at Trennor, a remote and rambling house on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. A ridiculously generous offer has been made for the house, but he refuses to sell despite the urgings of his children, for whom the proceeds would solve a variety of problems.

On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls suddenly and desperately in love with a woman he meets by pure chance, Marian Esguard. Back in England, he separates from his wife and goes to meet Marian at an agreed rendezvous, only to hear her tell him on the telephone that she will not, after all, be coming. Then she vanishes from his life as mysteriously as she entered it. Who and where is the woman he met and fell in love with in Vienna?

The car jolts to a halt at the pavement's edge, the driver waving through the windscreen to attract Richard's attention. He starts with astonishment. The driver is Gemma, his ex-wife. He has not seen or spoken to her for several years. They have, she memorably assured him the last time they met, nothing to say to each other. But something has changed her mind - something urgent.

One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death. A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems.

Harry Barnett, a middle-aged failure, leads a shabby existence. He is reduced to caretaking a friend's villa on the island of Rhodes and working in a bar to earn his keep. Then a guest at the villa - a young woman he had instantly warmed to - disappears on a mountain peak. Under suspicion of her murder, Harry becomes obsessed by the mystery that has changed his life and begins to trace back the movements and encounters that led to the moment where she vanished into the blue.

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States.

Eldritch Swan is a dead man. Or at least that is what his nephew Stephen has always been told. Until one day Eldritch walks back into his life after 36 years in an Irish prison. He won't reveal any of the details of his incarceration, insisting only that he is innocent of any crime....

Ex-flying ace James ‘Max’ Maxted’s attempt to uncover the secret behind the death of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, has seemingly ended in failure - and his own death. Unaware of Max’s fate, the team continue to pursue their only lead, travelling to Japan in search of a mysterious prisoner held by Sir Henry’s old enemy, Count Tomura. Once there, they encounter former German spymaster Fritz Lemmer, now rebuilding his spy network in the service of a new, more sinister cause. 

It is a hot summer's day in the tourist village of Avebury. A man sits outside the Red Lion pub, waiting. He sees a woman with three young children, two of them running ahead while their sister dawdles behind. A child's voice catches on the breeze. For want of anything more interesting to do, the man watches. He sees nothing sinister or threatening. Even when another figure enters his field of vision, he does not react. The figure is ordinary - male, short-haired, stockily built. But he is moving fast, at a loping run. And then it happens. 

Harry Barnett thought he had left his military career behind, so he is startled when two figures from his past turn up on his doorstep after 50 years. An old friend has organised the reunion to end all reunions: a weekend in the Scottish castle where the ex-comrades took part in a psychological experiment many years before. They haven't seen each other since. As they set off on their all-expenses-paid jaunt to Aberdeen, the old friends are in high spirits. But the cheerful atmosphere is quickly shattered by the apparent suicide of one of their party.

Spring, 1919. James ‘Max’ Maxted, former Great War flying ace, returns to the trail of murder, treachery and half-buried secrets. Having left Paris after avenging the murder of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, he is convinced there is more - much more - to be discovered about what Sir Henry had been trying to accomplish. And he suspected elusive German spymaster Fritz Lemmer knows the truth of it. Now, undercover in Lemmer’s service but with his loyalty pledged to the British Secret Service, Max sets out on his first - and possibly last - mission for Lemmer.

1919. The eyes of the world are on Paris, where statesmen, diplomats and politicians have gathered to discuss the fate of half the world’s nations in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was the Great War. A horde of journalists, spies and opportunists have also gathered in the city, and the last thing the British diplomatic community needs at such a time is the mysterious death of a senior member of their delegation.