LONG TIME COMING – Robert Goddard

Jane of janebooks on the Amazon discussion pages is today’s guest poster.  In her own words:

“I am a retired accountant who loves reading.  When I registered my younger daughter for college, I registered, too, and nine years of night school later acquired a degree in Literature, mainly Irish studies, here in Jacksonville, Florida.  After my voluntary down-sizing in 1995 , I moved back to South Carolina and my small hometown, lived with an only sister, and started a small used bookstore, mainly mysteries.  I returned to Jacksonville in 2007 to be close to my two daughters and two grandchildren.    My favorite writers at this time are Benjamin Black and Declan Hughes with a special nod to Robert Goddard.”

A TROVE OF PICASSO’S….by janebbooks

A Review of LONG TIME COMING by Robert Goddard

What could be better than a stolen trove of Picasso paintings and a bit of Irish history?
Robert Goddard’s latest publication LONG TIME COMING has both. It’s a spellbinding novel!The time is 1976. Eldrich Swan is released from a Irish prison after 36 years imprisonment. He returns to England and is recruited to recover the Picasso’s, currently the property of an American tycoon and exhibited at the Royal Academy of London. His nephew Stephen and the granddaughter of a Jewish diamond merchant, his former employer and owner of the art, help in the recovery. The paintings had been stolen from a vault of a London art dealer during World War II.

At the heart of the novel is another story. It’s about the dawn of World War II and the neutrality of Ireland featuring real-life characters. Eamon de Valera, a hero of the Easter Uprising of 1916, is Tsoiseach of the Irish Republic having served as early President of the Irish Free State. One Malcolm MacDonald of the British Legation is in Dublin to persuade de Valera and Ireland to join the war effort. It is June 1940.

Also in Dublin in 1940 is one fictional Eldrich Swan searching for a master forger named Desmond Quilligan.

Goddard cleverly takes his readers back-and-forth from 1940 Dublin to 1976. And finally to Belgium to resolve the matter of the stolen art. It’s a rewarding and fascinating tale!

Postscript:  How many paintings are a trove?  Goddard’s trove is eighteen Picasso’s—painted between 1907 and the early 1930’s.  By the time his fictional protagonist searches for provenance in 1976, the paintings would be priceless!