Bubble Rap (Sea Change - Robert Goddard)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Sea Change - Robert Goddard
Date:	24/05/01 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Short chapters, Pacey and captivating, Useful appendices at the back provide a list of characters (both real and fictional), and a glossary providing historical background detail particularly useful to history-hating know-nowts like me,

Disadvantages: Not very mysterious.

Robert Goddard is one of the best thriller writers around.
He was the first winner of the W.H.Smith Thumping Good Read Award (for "Into The Blue" in 1990) and he has been described as "the master of the triple double-cross" and "the prince of plotters" His paperbacks carry the legend: "The most compelling storyteller of them all". I can personally vouch for that - the first Robert Goddard novel I read kept me glued until 4am one night.

His novels usually follow a set pattern: Middle-aged bloke going through a mid-life crisis meets and falls for a mysterious woman who then disappears. Somehow he ends up suspected of murder and on the run trying to unravel the truth, clear his name and find the lady.

So what can I tell you about the plot of Sea Change without giving the game away? Quite a lot actually, because, like all his books, it twists and turns like a ghost train.


Set in 1721, with the South Sea Bubble scandal as it's backdrop, we follow the fortunes of mapmaker William Spandrel who has found himself in the precincts of the Fleet (a debtor's prison)
after his creditors called in their loans before his labour of love -
a new map of London - could be completed.

But then one of those creditors: Sir Theodore Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, makes Spandrel an offer he can't refuse... Janssen has bought up all of Spandrel's debts, and asks him to take a package to Amsterdam in return for their discharge.
The mysterious package contains a little green book which has been entrusted to Janssen by Robert Knight, the chief cashier of the company, and it is the financial equivalent of a smoking gun - implicating someone VERY high up in the establishment in the scandal. Unfortunately for Spandrel, the person he delivers the package to, one M. Ysbrand de Vries in Amsterdam, is murdered.
Spandrel has been set up as the fall guy - buy by whom? <
br><br><br>
There no real doubt about who the murderer is - the butler did it.
But he scarpers soon after framing Spandrel, and de Vries's wife Estelle also disappears, as does the green book of course...

Thus begins a chase across Europe, involving Spandrel, Estelle, the butler, agents of the British government, Janssen's valet,
and the Jacobites (who hope the book will discredit King George)
as Spandrel becomes an innocent pawn being pushed across the political chessboard of Europe, desperately trying to avoid being sacrificed. Oh, and there is a good old-fashioned 18th century duel thrown in for good measure!

Even so, Sea Change is not one of Goddard's best books, it's like one long wild goose chase, rather than the deep dark mysteries I've come to expect from him.

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