It is a hot summer's day in the tourist village of Avebury.A man sits outside the Red Lion pub, waiting. He sees a woman with three young children, two of them running ahead while their sister dawdles behind. A child's voice catches on the breeze.For want of anything more interesting to do, the man watches. He sees nothing sinister or threatening. Even when another figure enters his field of vision, he does not react. The figure is ordinary - male, short-haired, stockily built.But he is moving fast, at a loping run.And then it happens. In one swift movement, the running man grabs the youngest child and carries her away. Still the man outside the pub does not react. Suddenly, awhite transit van bursts into view, its engine racing, its rear door slamming shut.The child and her abductor are inside. The child's sister rushes forward. The man outside the pub jumps up...The tragedy begins at Avebury.But it does not end there.

In her seaside cottage, Beatrix Abberley bravely confronts an intruder moments before her life is brutally taken. The crime stuns the elderly spinster's family--especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn the loss of her beloved aunt and little patience when police quickly arrest a man Charlotte believes is innocent. For Charlotte, a harrowing quest for answers begins--one that will take her into the shadows of the past...and into the life and secrets of the dead woman's brother, famed poet and casualty of the Spanish Civil War, Tristram Abberley.Now, amid shattering revelations about her family, and in the aftermath of a second savage crime, Charlotte finds herself at the center of a widening storm. And for Charlotte, something extraordinary is beginning to happen. As fifty years of secrets begin to unravel, shy, cautious Charlotte is coming alive in the shadow of a mystery--uncovering a shocking tale of wartime greed and...

It begins with an innocent request. One unremarkable winter morning, civil servant Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London when he is intercepted by his ex-wife, Gemma. She has sad news of his old friend, her other ex-husband, Marty Hewitson. Marty is dying, but needs one last favour done for him – now, today, at once. Eusden reluctantly agrees. But what should be a simple errand soon it turns into a race for life – his and Marty's.It takes him across Belgium, Germany and Denmark and on into the Nordic heart of a mystery that somehow connects Marty's long dead grandfather, Clem Hewitson, an Isle of Wight police officer, with the tragic fate of the Russian Royal Family, murdered ninety years earlier. To his dismay, Eusden discovers that he can trust no one, not even his old, dying friend, in his battle with those who are determined to steal the secret they believe he and Marty hold, and who will kill for it if they have to. Every move Eusden makes threatens to be a step closer to disaster. But move he must if he is to escape the clutches of history. It is his only hope. Eusden's pursuit of the truth takes him, and the reader, on a lightning tour of Europe while harking back to the savage and terrifying events which have cast a blight on the continent's future for so long. From its opening page to its dramatic conclusion, Found Wanting is Robert Goddard at his spellbinding best.