Robert Goddard

Thriller writer Robert Goddard, whose new novel Long Time Coming was recently published, admits that since becoming a writer, he finds he has much less time to read than he used to, but reveals just what manages to fill the precious reading time that he sets aside...

The Salati Case by Tobias Jones
Goddard admits that he is a great fan of Michael Dibdin, and having read in The Bookseller that “Tobias Jones has created a sleuth to match Aurelio Zen”, he felt he couldn’t pass up the chance to read this new novel...
Castagnetti (informally known as ‘Casta’) is a private detective who doesn’t do things by the book. He’s dogged and lonely, impatient with the world of appearances and deceit. So when a pompous notary commissions him to verify that a missing person is ‘presumed dead’ in order to dispose of a dead woman’s estate to the other heirs, Casta smells a rat. Before long he's reopening wounds from years ago and exposing family secrets to those who have tried to suppress them. The relatives of Signora Salati just want their inheritance, but Casta is going to make sure they get their just desserts as well. Because Casta isn't the sort to content himself with ‘presumed dead’. He likes certainty, the kind of certainty that comes from seeing a skeleton. As the Salati case progresses, other corpses appear and Casta realizes he's at the centre of an old-fashioned Italian whodunit.

Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk
Goddard especially recommends this particular book because of its “surprising insights into what it was like to grow up in Istanbul...and there are some very good and fascinating grainy atmospheric photographs”, although he also admits “even better, these short chapters are just ideal to send me off to sleep.”
Turkey’s greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of Istanbul – the city of his birth and the home of his imagination. This is a supremely moving account of one man's love affair with the city that has been his home since his birth.