Product Description

It is a golden evening of high summer.  Walking a ridge on the Welsh Borders, Robin Timariot meets by chance an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place.  They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable.  A few days later Timariot learns from the newpapers that, just hours after their meeting, the woman was raped and murdered.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems.  Fascinated by the dead woman's memory, he is sucked into the complex motives and tortured relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgemnt for the secret of what really happened the day she died.

The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be.  And far too late he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live.


From the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #202901 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-31
• Released on: 2006-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 397 pages

From Publishers Weekly
First published in the UK in 1995, this psychological thriller has a that plot springs from the chance encounter between English businessman Robin Timariot and Lady Louise Paxton, who meet briefly while hiking near Wales. Hours later, Paxton is found raped and strangled in a nearby cottage. Over the proceeding months and years, Timariot watches as a drifter get convicted of the murder and the Paxton family disintegrates into rivalries, suicides and tensions owing to the crime. Meanwhile, Timariot, heir to a cricket bat manufacturing company, must navigate his own family squabbles, fueled in part by the company's lagging position in the marketplace. As with many of his 16 novels (Dying to Tell, etc.), Goddard's plotting is a smooth mix of secrets, deceits and slowly unfolding horrors.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal
Long ago, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) totally hoodwinked this reviewer, who has since been suspicious of any mystery written in the first person. This distrust was intensified by Nicholas Farrell's seemingly innocent interpretation of Robin Timariot, the protagonist of Borrowed Time. Is he the honest, ingenuous Englishman he seems? Or is he capable of complex lies, rape, and murder? Farrell's outstanding reading is as ambiguous as the story is layered. Initially, his neutral tones introduce a colorless, joyless government employee. Yet Timariot meets a lovely woman on the evening of her murder, and his emotions are stirred by her beauty and, later, by horror at hearing of her rape and murder. Even though he is unable to adequately explain his obsession with the dead woman and her family, his subsequent involvement in their lives brings some meaning to his. Farrell unobtrusively effects this transformation by orally coloring Timariot with shades of admiration, anger, disgust, disappointment, embarrassment, and concern. Mystery fans will appreciate this recording's characterization, plot, and performance. Recommended.
Juleigh Muirhead Clark, Coll. of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Poised at a professional crossroads, Eurocrat Robin Timariot sets out on a weeklong walk along the Welsh borders to clear his head. While resting on a scenic ridge, he meets a beautiful and enigmatic stranger named Louise Paxton. The two chat briefly, and she offers him a ride, which he declines. Upon journey's end, Timariot is astonished to learn that Ms. Paxton and expressionist painter Oscar Bantock were murdered at Bantock's cottage mere hours after she and Timariot met. Certain he was one of the last to see her alive, Timariot contacts the authorities and soon becomes entangled in the lives of the peculiar Paxton clan: Louise's husband, Keith, a wealthy, knighted doctor, and their two daughters, law student Sarah and emotionally unstable Rowena, who is engaged to a man who seems too good to be true. An arrest is made in the murder case, but suspicions soon mount that police nabbed the wrong man. Meanwhile, Timariot has family issues of his own: his late brother's headstrong wife has married widower Keith (but not for the money, she insists). Fans of P. D. James will savor best-selling Brit Goddard's plentiful plot twists and crisp, polished prose. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Good, if a bit long-winded
...

There are three types of mystery novels. The best of them grab you by the throat and pull you along. You give up eating and sleeping to get through them in one sitting. The worst of them can be encapsulized in a page and a half, you've figured out who the killer is in three sentences, and you can safely consign them to the fire without enduring the rest of the writing therein. The third type sits between the two. It's well-written enough, and fine while you're reading it, but you don't feel that compulsion to continue when something else beckons; you don't resent the phone ringing when you hear it. These are the good mysteries (as opposed to the great ones). Robert Goddard writes good mysteries. This is his eighth, the story of how a man on a hike's chance encounter with a beautiful woman gets him (and some members of his family) tangled up in her family's odd twists and turns. It's well plotted, moves along at a steady if not brisk pace, and there are enough satisfying twists and turns to keep the reader occupied. But it doesn't beg to be picked up every time it's put down. Perhaps the problem lies in Goddard's writing style, which is a bit on the thick side; perhaps it's just his characters, who always seem to be teetering on the brink of two-dimensionality without ever actually getting there (that, of course, is a charge that can be laid against many mysteries, including some of the best; Spillane's female characters, e.g., had all the depth of a lasagna noodle). Or perhaps, Borrowed Time just doesn't read as fast as some of its contemporaries. It's certainly not a bad novel, and mystery fans who have grown tired of reading the same authors over and over again might do well to refresh themselves with a dip in Goddard's pool. Just don't be expecting another Lehane, Parker, or Highsmith. ** 1/2

IT'S JUST A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL JUDGEMENT DAY
A chance encounter with a stranger on a hiking trail near the Welsh border leads Robin Timariot into a maze of murder, intrigue and deceit. The story embraces a wide range of characters and human emotions and presents a sharp exercise in family in-fighting and "looking out for number one". Goddard has mastered the magical secret at the heart of all compelling fiction as he takes you into Robins'nightmare adventure.

Each Goddard book is a real treat, and each is as different from the previous as night from day. Run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore....or library and hop on board the Robert Goddard Express.

Borrowed Time
An excellent read! I discovered this author and his books only recently, and I've read almost all of them since. His writing reminds me of the fine writer of novels set in England, Elizabeth George. His characters are well developed and the story keeps you in suspense until the end. I highly recommend this book and other books by Robert Goddard.