One False Move

BGJ 194 Winter 2020-2021
Reviewed by Tony Atkins

Author: Robert Goddard
Publisher: (Paperback version) Penguin
ISBN: 9780552172615

Robert Goddard is an English crime thriller writer, our equivalent of Jeffery Deaver, called on the cover “Our finest practitioner of doublecross plotting”. His 28th novel, published in 2019, is One False Move. Often in novels, especially fantasy or sci-fi, Go gets an oblique mention, but in this book it is quite central to the plot. You can tell this instantly when you look at the title page for the first of three sections; it is called “Opening Game” and has a diagram of an empty Go board. The cover of the Penguin edition, shown here, has a night scene of ships in harbour, presumably in Falmouth where the opening is set.

The story starts across the water at St Mawes, when Nicole starts to look for someone who has beaten her company’s AI Go program, ’gridforest’. She follows the young Joe onto the ferry and sees him playing a game on his mobile Go set.

When in Falmouth she googles Falmouth Go Club and finds they meet on a Monday evening in the snug of the Seven Stars. Just to check this is not a Go group the BGA is unaware of, I did the same; the top hit is for the 2019 Cornish Open which took place in the town. However there is a pub called the Seven Stars, but it is described differently from the actual one. Goddard lives in Truro, so he knows the area well and the descriptions of that part of Cornwall are realistic in the book. So too is the atmosphere within the Go club when Nicole visits it.

Goddard studied in Cambridge, so maybe he visited the club there, or maybe visited another club for research? You can recognise the characters in the club: the player from Hong Kong, the bald man with spectacles and other “middle-aged men with slightly quirky looks”.

Nicole is taught the rules and then given a game against Joe. They discuss AlphaGo playing Lee Sedol, ’gridforest’, and what Joe likes about Go (there are no grey stones). On another day, Joe explains ko to Nicole, with a diagram, explaining that Go mirrors life, things move on and you can never go back to how it was before.

The second section is the “Middle Game” with an appropriate game diagram, though captured stones have not been removed. This section is back-story about one of the characters at the end of the Cold War and doesn’t feature Go.

The third section is the “End Game”, the diagram showing the same game nearer the end (the earlier captured stones are now removed but more so have arrived). In this part Nicole is on the run and tracks down Joe at GCHQ in Cheltenham. The book explains that Joe had lost at a regional tournament held in Bath to Lewis Martinek from Gloucester, described as an eccentric’s eccentric. The tournament described is not called the Wessex, had been moved to May and was held in a sports hall.

Nicole and Joe arrange for a rematch (with Martinek getting a fee) in a coffee shop in the middle of Cheltenham; not online, as Martinek needs to look into his opponent’s eye and see his hand trembling. The rematch takes place, Martinek doing his usual mumbling under his breath, but Nicole drags Joe away before the game is over and the book rushes on towards its exciting climax.

So a well-written and well-researched novel with Go very much at its centre and worth a read. The next book I need to track down is “Rain Dogs” by Adrian McKinty, in which the detective goes to Finland to find a suspect who is playing Go.