It's strange, really, given my penchant for crime and mystery novels, that I'd never even heard of Robert Barnard till the other day though apparently he has written countless numbers of the things and is very celebrated. Anyway all that changed when I read a review of this one on someone's blog (sorry, can't remember whose). I was intrigued because it is set, or at least it starts, in the middle of the second world war, which has obsessed me for some months now. So off I went to Amazon, and I'm happy to say it lived up to expectations.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't until it plopped onto the doormat that I discovered that the blurb on the back has a headline all of its own -- Little Boy Lost. Of course that is the title of a wonderful novel by Marghanita Laski, which I read only a month ago. I'm not sure if this was a deliberate reference -- possibly not, as Barnard's novel was published in 1984, about 40 years after Laski's, and I doubt if the publishers would expect anyone to remember that far back. Perhaps Barnard himself did, though, as this does take as its starting point a situation not entirely unrelated to Laski's -- a child separated from his parents in wartime, his identity uncertain.
There the similarity ends, though, as little Simon, aged about five when the novel begins, arrives in the West of England with a trainload of evacuees. As the other children are gradually ticked off the list and sent to their respective homes, it becomes clear that Simon is unaccoutably not listed anywhere. Nobody knows where he came from or where he is supposed to go. Luckily a good and kind-hearted couple take him in, and soon he is happily settled in the village. And there, no-one ever having come along to claim him, he remains until he is old enough to go off to university. He has never been particularly curious about his origins, of which he seems to have no memory, though he was prone to nightmares at first which seemed to involve some kind of violence. One day, though, walking through Paddington in London, he has a sudden memory of the area and feels sure he must once have lived there. And so begins an investigation which soon turns into an obsession, as he tracks down what he knows must be his family and tries, without much success, to discover why he ended up on that train.
The novel moves seamlessly forward through time from 1941 to the early 1980s, each era being wonderfully and vividly evoked. Particularly impressive is the depiction of the British fascist movements before and after the war, to which Simon discovers his supposed father had belonged. From Mosley's Blackshirts in the 1930s to the sad, swaggering members of a 1970s British Citizens Army, they are brought to life in a most convincing and depressing way.
But essentially, of course, this is Simon's story, and a fascinating one it is, as he tramps the streets and searches through local newspapers for indications of who he might be. The final truth is not revealed until almost the end, though there are plenty of red herrings along the way. As you can see, this is not a murder mystery, though there is an unexplained death at the heart of it.
I enjoyed this tremendously and wonder if anyone else has read any Barnard as I'm all set to order another but rather overwhelmed by the huge choice!
