Robert Goddard: Past Caring (UK 2010)

From the Publisher:
1910: Distinguished MP Edwin Strafford resigns at the pinnacle of his career, removing himself from the public eye. The woman he loves, and for whom he was willing to sacrifice everything, suddenly and coldly rejects him. All the reasons for his fall from grace are shrouded in darkness.

Seventy years later, historian Martin Radford is down on his luck when a mysterious benefactor offers him the opportunity of a lifetime: to uncover what exactly happened to Edwin Strafford. But this apparent good fortune swiftly turns into a nightmare. Radford's investigations trigger a violent series of events, which throw him straight into the path of those who believed they had escaped punishment for crimes long past but never paid for...

Robert Goddard: Past Caring. Is 70 years long enough to forgive anything? Corgi Books, ISBN: 9780552162951 (September, 2010), 622 p., £7.99.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What's more, Martin is being offered a job -- to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family.

Martin is intrigued by Strafford's story, by the man's overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair's political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford's ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately -- about a man's mysterious death and a family's terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over -- and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all...

Robert Goddard: Past Caring. Delta Publishing, ISBN: 0385341172 (May, 2008), 501 p., $12.00.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
Edwin Strafford was a brilliant young Cabinet minister on the verge of a great career. Yet he resigned his position in order to marry the beautiful Elizabeth Latimer, whose work as a Suffragette was not acceptable to Strafford's party. Why, in the face of his sacrifice, did Elizabeth brutally reject him? More than sixty years after Strafford condemned himself to self-imposed exile, the historian Martin Radford sets out to unravel the mystery. Pursuing the past through Strafford's journal and through the recollections of Elizabeth herself, Radford is drawn into a labyrinth of deceit, murder, and betrayal -- a labyrinth that leads into the present and into Radford's very own life.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring. Penguin Books, ISBN: 0140106006 (April, 1988), 501 p., $4.95.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
Already an acclaimed success in England, this remarkable first novel from Robert Goddard is compulsive reading. Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, jumps at the chance to visit the Portuguese island of Madeira at the invitation of an old university friend who is running the local English language newspaper. Luck continues to run with him when he is offered a lucrative commission to research the mysterious resignation and subsequent obscure retirement -- on Madeira -- of Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Stafford. Stafford's secret journal becomes the focal point of Radford's investigation. Soon, however, he finds himself entangled in a bizarre and inevitably violent chain of events: a chain which leads him back to crimes long past and the people who sought to conceal them.

With echoes of John Fowles' The Magus, the compelling narrative style and labyrinthine plot make Past Caring an extraordinary achievement.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring. A Novel. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312001738 (January, 1987), 528 p., $12.00.

Robert Goddard: Past Caring (UK 1987)

From the Publisher:
Why should distinguished Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Strafford resign at the height of his parliamentary career? Why does the woman he loves so suddenly and coldly reject him? Why, seventy years later, should people go to such lengths - even as far as murder - to prevent the truth from being revealed?

Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, leaps at the chance to get to the island of Madeira and begin the hunt for a solution to the intriguing secret of Edwin Strafford's fall from grace. However, his seeming good fortune turns to nightmare as his investigation triggers a bizarre and violent train of events which remorselessly entangles him and those who believed they had escaped the spectre of crimes long past but never paid for...

Robert Goddard: Past Caring. Corgi Books, ISBN: 055213144X (July, 1987), 524 p., £3.50.