Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay

Great Escapist Fiction.

Published in 2012 by NAL (New American Library)

Linwood Barclay. I came across him almost by accident about 3 years ago and he is one of my favorite authors to go looking for. He doesn't write series (at least not anymore) so you can just jump in and go for a ride. His books feature regular guys who get stuck in an extraordinary circumstance not of their making.

In Trust Your Eyes two grown brothers are reunited due to the death of their father. One of the brothers (Ray) is a political cartoonist. The other, Thomas, has some sort of schizophrenia that keeps him housebound. To be honest, he seemed more autistic to me (as a teacher I have ran across enough students on the autistic spectrum to readily identify the behaviors) but that is neither here nor there. Thomas has an obsession - maps. He hangs them on the wall, he studies them, he memorizes them and he cruises the internet everyday looking at Whirl360, a website that is a lot like Google Maps Street View. He cruises up and down street after street, memorizing them. He has hardly traveled anywhere but he can describe in detail how to get to the nearest bakery from just about any hotel in America. Here's the kicker - Thomas cruises the internet to look at Whirl360 because he believes that former President Bill Clinton has asked him to do it on behalf of the CIA just in case the internet crashes and their agents need to use him as a map resource.

Linwood Barclay

One day, while Thomas is using Whirl360 to look at New York City he happens to look up and see something odd. Whirl360 is fictional but is based on Google Maps Street View which creates a virtual street view of the address you are looking for. That virtual view is created by putting together a series of pictures taken by cars that have an odd contraption on their roof that take a lot of high quality photos as they drive up and down the street. Google has a lot of fans that peruse the sight looking for strange things such as kids ramping dirt bikes or police officers writing tickets. In this case, the camera caught something very odd in a third story window. Thomas thinks it looks a face inside a plastic bag being choked to death. The only problem is that Thomas' behavior is so strange and he is so socially inept that no one believes him or even begins to understand what he is talking about.

That is until, one day, he shows the picture to Ray and then convinces Ray to go to the building to investigate when he is New York City on business. Then, everything falls apart very quickly...

What Linwood Barclay has done here is what he does best - put a regular guy in the midst of a criminal conspiracy that threatens to undo everything he knows and may even kill him. It is entertaining, a breeze to read and offers some great escapism.

I rate Trust Your Eyes 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Trust Your Eyes.

Reviewed on August 19, 2012.

No Time for Goodbye: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay

Delivers what it promises - tension, thrills and escapism

Published 2007 by Bantam

Linwood Barclay has quickly become one of my favorite authors. His books often feature a happy family in which some event intrudes into their lives and turns everything upside down, very much like the classic black and white noire movies where the regular guy gets pulled into a seedy underworld that he had no idea even existed.  Note, these books are not deep, they are not fine literature in any sense. But, they drag you in and make you read right through to the end and the story is well worth the price of the book.

No Time for Goodbye is no different. The story is about Cynthia and Terry Archer. They have one daughter. He's a high school teacher. She works in a women's clothing store. They are a happy couple except for one dark moment twenty-five years before when Cynthia was 14 years old. One day she woke up and her entire family was gone - her mom, her dad and her brother. No note. No luggage gone. No one packed anything. They were just gone.

So, on the 25th anniversary of their disappearance, Cynthia decides to work with a reality television show and have them tell her story in the hope that someone will remember something and give her a clue as to what happened.

Soon enough, things start to happen, but not what they had hoped for. Someone breaks into their house. A strange car starts to follow Cynthia and then things really start to spin out of control.

Great thriller. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: No Time for Goodbye.

Reviewed on December 5, 2011.

Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay

WOW! This one starts in a hurry and never slows up!

Published in 2009 by Bantam.

Normally, I am very skeptical of all of those little blurbs that cover books. This one came with all kinds of blurbs from established authors and professional reviewers, including "Will leave you breathless - Robert Crais", "A one-sit thriller - Michael Connelly" and "The surprises just keep on coming - Charlaine Harris."

Well, guess what? Fear the Worst lives up to its praise. I'd never heard of Linwood Barclay before I read this book, but he writes a terrific thriller.

The premise of the book is that car salesman Tim Blake's daughter goes to work one day and does not return. No one at her job has seen her before. No one in the area knows anything about her. Her best friends don't know anything. She's just gone. The whole idea comes from the author's daughter who looked at him at breakfast one day and said, "Suppose you came to pick me up at my job, and found out I'd never worked there?"

This book is jam-packed with action, but none of it seems over the top. There are dozens of plot twists, a body count that would make a Sylvester Stallone movie jealous and surprisingly normal good guys going against bad guys that are real bad, but not unrealistically bad.

What do I mean? Well, I can't really get into it without creating spoilers, but suffice it to say, it's not like our hero, a car salesman, takes out the Russian Mafia singlehandedly, but the bad guys are certainly bad enough.

One very nice touch is that the main character always refers to every car by it's make and model. He never calls it a blue mini-van. It would be a Honda Odyssey. Why is that a nice touch? Car salesmen know cars - all of them.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay.

Reviewed on June 1, 2009.

Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay

Not as good as other Linwood Barclay books

Published in 2009 by Bantam.

I am an enthusiastic fan of Never Look Away and Fear the Worst my first two Linwood Barclay books. This book continues in the tradition of many film noir thrillers - the regular guy who gets his whole life overturned by some sort of crime and how he reacts to it. Unfortunately, Too Close to Home was not the equal of those two books.

In Too Close to Home we meet the Cutter family, a mom, dad and a teenage son. The neighbors are brutally murdered one night and the family skeletons start to come out of the closet in a big, big way as the police begin to investigate everyone who even might be connected to the victims.

Linwood Barclay

This was precisely the problem with the book, in my opinion. This family has too many skeletons. Every few pages there is a major plot twist with a "sit down, I've got to tell you something" moment.

I am still giving the book 3 stars out of 5 because Barclay makes you want to keep pushing on - even though you know it is just going to get more complicated to the point of being silly.

This book can  be found on Amazon.com here: Too Close to Home.

Reviewed on November 26, 2010.

Never Look Away: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay

Another Winner from Barclay

Published in 2010 by Delacorte Press

Linwood Barclay excels at writing books in which the average middle class guy (a car salesman in Fear the Worst: A Thriller, a newspaper reporter in this book) has his whole life turned upside down and is thrust into a world of crime, violence and intrigue. His books remind me of the old-fashioned film noire style except these are quicker and have even more turns.

Linwood Barclay

In Never Look Away: A Thriller, David Harwood is a reporter with a wife, a son, two loving parents who babysit their son and a hot lead on signs of corruption in local government that will make an explosive story. Suddenly, his wife disappears at a local theme park and he is accused of causing her disappearance.

More problems pile on and the pressure makes David and his world crumble.

There is a point in which the reader says, "What? Even more happens to this guy?"

Does it get ridiculous?

Absolutely.

More importantly, does the story work?

Absolutely.

This is a real page turner. I found myself losing real chunks of time if I picked this book up during my morning routine. I was nearly late to work two days in a row because I had to keep reading a little bit more.

I look forward to the next one, Mr. Barclay.

5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Never Look Away: A Thriller.

Reviewed on February, 26, 2010.