Product Description

Targeting the beautiful daughter of a wealthy munitions dealer in the hopes of receiving a payoff from her father, scam artists Guy Horton and Max Wingate find their plan upset when Max really falls in love. Reprint.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #494364 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
British novelist Goddard's thriller of deception and conspiracy takes place in Europe between the world wars.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Guy Horton and Max Wingate, both disaffected veterans of World War I, have roamed the world as partners in various confidence games. Amid Depression-era gloom they court English heiress Diana Charnwood with hopes of quick financial gain. Their callow scheme leads, however, to murder and a harsh moral education as Guy's investigation of the homicides unexpectedly uncovers those responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The author of Hand in Glove (Poseidon, 1993) begins his new novel with hijinks reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse but soon establishes moral quandaries worthy of Graham Greene. Carefully plotted and elegantly phrased, this is at once a suspenseful mystery and a thoughtful examination of the lingering effects of evil.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Then tables are turned with a vengeance when two con men try to turn a 1931 shipboard romance into a spot of genteel blackmail--only to find the family that they've targeted single-handedly started WW I. Originally jealous of his old friend Max Wingate's amatory success with heiress Diana Charmwood, Guy Horton recoils in amazement when Max announces that he's too much in love with the lady to let her fearsome father, investment mogul Fabian Charmwood, buy him off--and then recoils in horror when Max's elopement with Diana, the details to which Guy had sold Charmwood, is interrupted by the appearance of the great man's corpse, sending Max into hiding and Guy determined to clear his name. Max will turn up again, but only as Guy and Diana are lying in each other's grief-stricken arms in Venice, where a group of Charmwood's creditors, who can't believe the news that his vast empire is worthless, have commissioned Guy to pry the whereabouts of his hidden assets out of Diana and her Aunt Vita. But the worst, as usual with Goddard, is still to come: scruffy journalist George Duggan tells a wild tale linking Charmwood--via an unholy cabal of investors calling themselves the Concentric Alliance--to a plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand in order to make the world safe for the armaments they've been investing in. Though Guy's story has lost every shred of plausibility by now, the continuing refrain of threat and counterthreat (will the Concentric Alliance be able to silence Guy before he's able to publish the damning evidence against them? whom can he trust in his flight from the perilous circle? and will he ever learn not to trust the sleek Diana?) will still keep you up much later than it should. High-toned, preposterous romantic period suspense from an old pro (Hand in Glove, 1993; A Debt of Dishonour, 1992, etc.). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Like Watching a Hitchcock Movie
Robert Goddard's books are all pretty much alike - and they're all pretty good: Crimes committed in the past coming back to haunt the protagonists later on.

Written in beautiful prose, the likeable and believable characters in Mr. Goddard's novels stumble through twists and turns, uncovering truths that turn out to be lies in the end.

A lot of research and a great feel for the times that the story takes place in (the 1930's in this case) are another trademark of Mr. Goddard's skills.

Reading any Robert Goddard novel is like watching a Hitchcock movie, and "Closed Circle" is one of the best.

THE MOVING FINGER WRITES, AND HAVING WRIT MOVES ON..
If you are a fan of Agatha Christie or Daphne DuMaurier's early works, you will enjoy this "period piece" by Goddard. Although published in 1993 it possesses the atomospheric and evocative flavor of the 1930's (the era in which it is set).

We are pulled into the lives of two con-men, Guy and Max, friends since their college days, as a chance meeting results in a set of circumstances that threatens not only their friendship but their very lives.

A conspiracy cover-up, love, murder, avarice and betrayal are all wrapped up in this tantalizing little tale.

Goddard takes advantage of his personal knowledge of history (he taught at Cambridge)in developing a story that is credible and ingenious.(Maybe things really did happen as he imagines.)

Once again, he has delivered an entertaining tome that will keep you spellbound.

Love, murders, lies and more...
This novel starts as a naive story with two crooks trying to find an easy way to make money - the only way they know. but slowly the plot becomes complicated and opens a Pandora box which free secrets one after the other...

I couldn't put the book down until I finish it all - till the surprising epilogue...