There is perhaps nothing quite as gripping as a good murder-mystery thriller. Of that genre, no other novel has captured me in the same way as In Pale Battalions. Robert Goddard’s second novel, of his now 26, opens in the 1980s but quickly takes readers back to the horrors of World War I and an entanglement of family secrets that still have bearing on the present-day survivors. The labyrinth of cross-generational complexities and resentments reminded me rather of Wuthering Heights.
Following her husband’s death, 70-year-old Leonora Galloway takes her daughter on a trip to Paris to see the Memorial of the Missing of the Somme where her father, Captain John Hallows, was presumed dead. It is then that Leonora finally begins to explain odyssey of her life to her daughter, thus framing the true, intricate plot of the novel.
Leonora relays much of the story as told to her by Tom Franklin, a friend of her late father’s who is given leave to convalesce for a wound sustained in the Somme with the Captain’s family at their estate, Meongate, in Hampshire. He discovers that the Captain’s wife, also named Leonora, surprisingly became pregnant shortly after her husband’s death and is hopelessly ensnared in a web of blackmail. The conniving of Leonora’s step-mother-in-law, Olivia, a villain to challenge all others, and her leeching American house guest, intent on gaining control of the estate, set Franklin and Leonora both on fateful journeys … the truth of which lies at the bottom of an endless tangle of deceptions.
The characters in this novel are immensely complex and challenge the reader’s accepted notions of what constitutes courage from cowardice, or even right from wrong. The moral ambiguity posed by the players’ actions is thought-provoking to say the least and enriches the depth of the novel.
Described by The New York Times upon release as “combin[ing] the expert suspense-manipulation skills of a Daphne du Maurier romance with those of a John le Carré thriller,” In Pale Battalions is bewitching, and the last 100 pages are a baroque, cascading fall of revelations by multiple, and at times unreliable, narrators. Goddard leaves no string untied nor any question unanswered … a writer after my own heart. His writing is also excellent and had me frequently turn to the dictionary to define my new word of the day.
Goddard’s most recent title published in America, The Ways of the World, was released this June. It was first published in England in 2013, and Goddard has since release two other novels that have not yet made it across the pond.
For our review on The Ways of the World, as well as on other mystery books this month, please visit our blog Cola Town {Curated} at ColumbiaMetro.com.
