NEVER GO BACK
Robert Goddard
Delta
Fiction
ISBN-10: 038534063X
ISBN-13: 9780385340632

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview -- September 7, 2007

When Harry Barnett returns to his hometown in England to close his late mother’s estate, he runs into two old mates from his days in the RAF. He is invited to the 50th reunion of a dozen comrades who served together at a castle in Aberdeen, Scotland, where they spent a tour of duty in 1955. A break from clearing closets and cupboards sounds like fun, so he joins them for what promises to be a nostalgic weekend. When one member of the group ends up dead and another goes missing before they reach their destination, a perilous search into a murky past begins. 

An evening in the bar car renders the revelers unconscious in their train seats. During the night, Harry’s seatmate gets up for fresh air and doesn’t come back. By the time they reach Aberdeen, Harry finds himself under suspicion in his disappearance. When the man’s body is found alongside the railway tracks, Harry is a prime murder suspect. As he tries to ferret out the truth behind the further accidents and disappearances of his old mates, Harry is drawn deeper into a half-century-old mystery.

None of Harry’s companions seems to have memories of their tour of duty, which was a crash course in college-level basics. Yet, slowly, déjà vu creeps in. A tour of the castle triggers sudden flashes of hidden memories among some of the men, and the ones with the most vivid recall meet with accidents or even death. Harry and another of his old buddies remember nothing except parties and studying, yet as events unfold, they begin to realize that they too are in imminent danger.

Harry Barnett has a knack for finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the reluctant hero of INTO THE BLUE (1990), he is a down-and-out expatriate living in Greece who is the last person to see a young woman who vanishes while they are hiking in the hills above Rhodes. He returns in OUT OF THE SUN (1996) to resolve a family crisis with a son he never knew. Now, in his golden years, having found peace and happiness in a marriage and becoming the father of a young daughter, he once again makes a decision that will change his life --- or end it.

Robert Goddard is a master storyteller and weaver of suspense. He has topped Britain’s book lists for two decades since the publication of his first bestselling novel in 1986. His vivid sense of place and time, intricate plotting, and strong, memorable characters lead readers willingly down each path he chooses to take us. A historian by training and a man with a fascination for how the past --- either an individual’s personal history or that of grand events --– can come back to ensnare us in the present are not only a stock in trade for Goddard, but one that he has honed to a fine, duplicitous and chilling edge.  

Harry Barnett so intrigued me that when I found myself with an hour to kill near a local bookseller, I aimed for the Thriller/Mystery section and found a copy of INTO THE BLUE. I am now better acquainted with Harry in his muddled middle age, all to better appreciate the senior Barnett of NEVER GO BACK, who can still slide down a tile roof and survive a foot chase through the back streets of Swindon. He’s breathing heavily and in need of a pint or two at the end, but he’s a survivor.

   --- Reviewed by Roz Shea

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