Tag Archives: novels set in wartime

#BookReview ‘The Ends of the Earth’ by Robert Goddard #WW2 #thriller

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Don’t do what I did, and read the first two books in this series by Robert Goddard and then leave 12 months before reading The Ends of the Earth, the third. Ideally this trilogy should be read back to back, in full sun when sitting on a sunlounger. The story runs along at a cracking pace, with dense plotting, loads of characters, politics, spies and locations from Europe to Japan. The pace of this, the third book, is constant, hardly time to draw a breath. Robert GoddardQuestions that I had forgotten about from the first book are revisited, challenged and solved. Japan is the scene for the climax of this tale of James Maxted, ‘Max’, and his hunt for the truth about his father’s death. But this is so much more than a single case of murder, on it hangs the future of post-Great War Europe and the twentieth-century relationship of Japan and America. At times things happen which seem a little convenient, a person turns out to have a skill or history of which we knew nothing before, but I forgave Goddard for this. He is a prime storyteller. It is clear he knows his settings – Paris, Marseilles, Switzerland, Japan – and this adds to the verisimilitude.
In this rollicking spy story, Goddard examines the nature of courage. Max finds himself drawing on the type of bravery he needed to survive in the Royal Flying Corps. “He was not surprised by how calm he felt, how undismayed by what lay before him. He had discovered his aptitude for taking risks early in the war. ‘You should be more careful, sir,’ Sam had said to him more than once. And Max had always given the same reply. ‘Being careful is what gets a chap killed.’ Eventually, he had come to believe that. And it was a belief that had served him well. So far.”

Read my reviews of Goddard’s other books:-
THE WAYS OF THE WORLD #1WIDEWORLD
THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE #2WIDEWORLD
PANIC ROOM
THE FINE ART OF INVISIBLE DETECTION #1UMIKOWADA
THIS IS THE NIGHT THEY COME FOR YOU #1SUPERINTENDENTTALEB

If you like this, try:-
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘Stay Where You Are and Then Leave’ by John Boyne
‘Slow Horses’ by Mick Herron #1SLOUGHHOUSE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by Robert Goddard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1O8 via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Corners of the Globe’ by Robert Goddard #WW2 #thriller

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The Corners of the Globe is a very fast-moving sequel by Robert Goddard, second in his Wide World series. There’s a Scotland to London train chase complete with spies, a captured German warship, murder, kidnapping, secret codes and jumping on and off trains which would rival The 39 Steps [which Goddard playfully has one of his characters read in the restaurant car of one of the trains]. Robert GoddardGreat War flying hero James Maxted is in London, convinced that the death of his father [in the first book] is not as simple as it appeared. His investigations take him further into danger, into the dark and deadly preview of the Second World War. You really do need to read book one first [see the link below for my review] although there is a little exposition at the beginning in the form of a Secret Service report, but to be honest it functions more as a recap for the reader who has read the first book than as an introduction for a newcomer.
I failed to guess the ending of the first book, did I guess the ending of this one correctly? No.

Read my reviews of Goddard’s other books:-
THE WAYS OF THE WORLD #1WIDEWORLD  
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH #3WIDEWORLD  
PANIC ROOM
THE FINE ART OF INVISIBLE DETECTION #1UMIKOWADA
THIS IS THE NIGHT THEY COME FOR YOU #1SUPERINTENDENTTALEB

If you like this, try:-
‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements #1TOMWILDE
‘The Second Midnight’ by Andrew Taylor
‘Noonday’ by Pat Barker #3LIFECLASS

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE by Robert Goddard via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-19H