Into the Blue
Robert Goddard
Delta, Feb 2006, $12.00
ISBN: 0385339194

Fifty-three years old Harry Barnett accompanies his much younger and obviously healthier guest visiting English schoolteacher Heather Mallender on a tour of the Greek Isle Rhodes where he has lived for about nine years as a housesitter. He stopped for a smoke and a second wind while she went on, but after waiting for a while for Heather to return, Harry anxiously sets off to find her. Instead he sees four stripes of "cerise and silver" from Heather's scarf caught on a low hanging tree branch. He reports her missing to the authorities who suspect he killed her.

Harry quickly realizes that the cops assume he harmed Heather. Deciding he needs to prove otherwise and finding nothing useful on Rhodes, Harry traces Heather back to England He learns Heather was visiting a psychiatrist, helping her not very successfully cope with the loss of her sister to an IRA bomb. However, Harry soon finds his own past not that of Heather's is where the answer lies, but obtaining the proof could prove deadly from people he trusts.

On the surface the story line is a simplistic amateur sleuth investigation starring a dissolute loser hiding from his roots. However, that would oversimplify a complex somewhat convoluted thriller filed with twists and plenty of irony as the reluctant warrior returns to the place of his greatest failure amidst other fiascos. The story line grips the reader from the moment Harry panics when he realizes that somehow Heather is missing and continues to hold reader attention as the "hero's" stomach churns when he concludes he is the only suspect and never let's go until Harry's final sardonic confrontation with a foe PAINTING THE DARKNESS with deception and blackmail.

Harriet Klausner