Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A Thriller With Heart



I usually prefer mysteries to thrillers (no end-of-the world scenarios and villains with more lives than the Terminator) but Canadian author Linwood Barclay's No Time for Goodbye adds a great deal of unexpected humanity to his latest. Cynthia Bigge's parents and brother vanished without a trace the day after she had a tempestuous teenage argument with her father. Twenty-five years later, raising a daughter with her husband in Milford, CT but still haunted by her family's disappearance, Cynthia goes on TV to talk about what happened and plead for clues. A mysterious phone call leads her to believe that her father, at least, may still be alive, but as her excitement grows, so do her worries. It soon appears that her family held secrets she never suspected.

If Barclay is still an unknown quantity, here are his earlier -- more conventional -- outdoor thrillers.

Stone Rain

Bad Guys

Lone Wolf

Bad Move

1 comment:

Linda said...

Hi Dick,

Just found your blog & really enjoyed perusing it.

I'd like to recommend a thriller I just finished reading by Paul Mark Tag called "Prophecy." The characters in it area also real -- they may be somewhat larger than life, but they have their strengths and weaknesses as all humans do. The story begins prior to the Johnstown flood of 1889, but also has the theme of genetics in it -- what a range in one story line!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Cheers,
Linda