I'm also one who dislikes pretension - perhaps that's one reason why I'm so sensitive to that class system. I'm not one who enjoys historical drama of the sort that the BBC is always praised for, because I seem to be more sensitive to the inequities of the British class system than most - even those, who, like me, spent their formative years living there - despite the fact that I don't think I suffered much of its effects. Robert Goddard's novels continue to confound me: I'm not sure what attracts me to them, but attract me, they do! I always hated history in high school it was always kings, queens, battles, wars, dates - all the stuff that was boring and irrelevant to a teenage boy. But Trenchard must plumb the depths of his own despair before the dark secrets of the Davenall family can finally, shockingly, be revealed. Davenall’s mother and younger brother, who has since inherited the family’s baronetcy, refuse to recognize this stranger as one of their own, and they soon force Trenchard-who fears the loss of his wife’s affections and his own sanity-into an uneasy alliance against him.

The stranger offers his name as James Norton, but claims he is in reality Sir James Davenall, the man to whom Trenchard’s wife Constance had once been engaged, and who had supposedly committed suicide eleven years ago. He has no inkling of the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear. When the creak of the garden gate announces the arrival of an unexpected visitor, he is puzzled but not alarmed. On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, thirty-four-year-old husband and father William Trenchard sits smoking his pipe in the garden of his comfortable family home.

In Robert Goddard’s third novel, a bestseller in the United Kingdom and now back in print, is a masterful exercise in suspense set in Victorian-era England.

Painting the darkness by robert goddard