Thumping Good Read Award; and Past Caring. He teaches history at the University of Cambridge and lives in Cornwall.Goddard applied the Page 69 Test to The Ways of the World and reported the following:
Page 69 of The Ways of the World finds our hero, James ‘Max’ Maxted, at the Café Parnasse in Paris in the early spring of 1919, in the company of his late father’s secret lover, Corinne Dombreux. They have something in common. Unlike just about everyone else involved, they believe Sir Henry Maxted didn’t die in an accidental fall from the roof of the apartment block where Corinne lives – he was pushed. The question is: who pushed him – and why?Visit Robert Goddard's website.
Quite a lot of the story emerges on this one page: the alliance between Max and Corinne; the wish of officialdom that no scandal be allowed to touch the post-war peace conference, where Sir Henry was serving as an advisor to the British delegation; the police’s theory that Sir Henry went onto the roof to spy on an Italian artist he suspected of being a rival for Corinne’s affections; the belief shared by Max and Corinne that Sir Henry actually went up there in pursuit of an intruder; the significance, ignored by the police, of the skylight broken from the inside.
‘How sure are you that he was murdered, Corinne?’ Max asks. And she replies, ‘You mean how sure can I make you?’ But the truth, which Corinne probably senses, is that Max is already sure. And he is not going to rest until he discovers the truth – or dies in the attempt.
Welcome to Paris, in the first year of a peace that for some will be deadlier than the war that preceded it.
My Book, The Movie: The Ways of the World.
--Marshal Zeringue
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