Play to the End - Softcover

Goddard, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385339186 ISBN 13: 9780385339186

Publisher: Delta, 2006

Synopsis

Once Toby Flood played a Bond-like hero in a Hollywood film. Now he’s serving a sentence in a crippled traveling production of a newly unearthed Joe Orton play—a play that might have saved Toby’s career if only someone enjoyed watching it. Painfully, the show’s swan song is coming in Brighton, where Toby’s wife happens to be living happily with another man in anticipation of a divorce decree. Then, almost as if he were scripted, a stranger enters the scene....

A stalker is frightening Toby’s wife, Jenny, who believes the man is probably one of her estranged husband’s fans. When Jenny asks Toby to confront the man, Toby leaps at the chance. Soon, he’s moonlighting from the stage lights and heroically pursuing... something. The truth is, the more Toby finds out about Jenny’s stalker, the more questions he has about a twisting tale of unexplained deaths, interlocking lives, and the violent, greedy adventures of none other than Jenny’s wealthy fiancé—a man who might make the perfect villain, if only the hero lives long enough to prove it....

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Intricate, fascinating and deeply satisfying to the last page -- another classic Robert Goddard mystery.

Actor Toby Flood, formerly of big and small screen but now seldom seen on either, arrives in Brighton with the other cast members of the Joe Orton play Lodger in the Throat. They have been on tour since September, but hopes of a West End transfer have been abandoned and they are all looking forward to the end of the run the following Saturday.

Flood is visited that night by his estranged wife, Jenny, now living with wealthy entrepreneur Roger Colborn. Jenny runs a shop in the Lanes and is worried about a strange man who is hanging around outside. Roger has dismissed her concerns but Jenny persuades Toby, for old times’ sake, to do something. The next day Flood trails the man and confronts him. Derek Oswin is an unemployed loner who blames Roger Colborn for his father’s death from cancer on account of dangerous practices at the now-closed plastics factory run by Roger and his late father, Sir Walter Colborn. However, Oswin is a fan of Flood’s and eventually he agrees to lay off. Then, Colborn gets wind of Flood’s contact with Jenny and tries to buy him off, but Flood sees only a longed-for opportunity to win Jenny back, and presses for answers to a host of questions surrounding the death of Sir Walter seven years earlier.

Before he fully understands the risks he is running, Flood finds himself entangled in the mysterious -- and dangerous -- relationship between the Oswins and the Colborns. The prospects of him surviving until the close of the play suddenly start to look far from good.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert Goddard’s first novel Past Caring was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and labyrinthine plots.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delta
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0385339186
• ISBN 13: 9780385339186
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368