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[Long Time Coming] by Robert Goddard
4.5 stars
From The Book:
Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. For nearly four decades, Eldritch Swan has been locked away in an Irish prison and now, at last, has been released. Shocked and suspicious, Stephen listens to the old man’s story and is caught up in a tale that begins at the dawn of World War II, when Eldritch worked for an Antwerp diamond dealer with a trove of Picassos—highly valuable paintings that later disappeared. Stephen, who finds his uncle by turns devious, charming, and brazen, then meets Rachel Banner, a beautiful American who may have inherited the Picassos—and is determined to see justice done for her family. But in this tale of revenge and redemption, justice is the ultimate illusion. Eldritch, Stephen, and the woman Stephen has fallen in love with soon find themselves fighting for their lives—against sinister forces still guarding a secret that must never be revealed.
My Thoughts:
A stolen trove of Picasso paintings and a bit of Irish history... that in a nutshell is what Robert Goddard's standalone novel [A Long Time Coming] is comprised of.
It's 1976. Eldrich Swan has been released from a Irish prison after 36 years imprisonment. He returns to England and is recruited to recover the Picasso's which is currently the property of an American tycoon and on exhibition at the Royal Academy of London. His nephew Stephen and the granddaughter of a Jewish diamond merchant... his former employer and owner of the art... help in the recovery. The paintings had been stolen from a vault of a London art dealer in the early days of World War II.
Like most of Goddard's novels, there is yet another story at the heart of this one also. It's the dawn of World War II and the neutrality of Ireland featuring some real-life characters. Eamon de Valera...a hero of the Easter Uprising of 1916... is Tsoiseach of the Irish Republic having served as early President of the Irish Free State. It's June , 1940 and Malcolm MacDonald of the British Legation is in Dublin to try and persuade Eamon de Valera and Ireland to join the war effort. Also in Dublin is the fictional Eldrich Swan searching for a master forger named Desmond Quilligan.
Goddard takes the reader back-and-forth from 1940 Dublin to 1976... and then to Belgium where the matter of the stolen art is finally resolved. It was another truly fascinating Robert Goddard adventure.
