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Linwood Barclay  – The Promise Falls Trilogy

One of m favorite author over the last several years has been Linwood Barclay. His books are always very interesting and they are very character driven. Most times the story revolves around one main character who is thrust into an extraordinary situation.

While Barclay’s book are considered stand alone thrillers Barclay has brought back characters for a second go-around. No Safe House was the second installment in the story of Terry Archer and his family. No Safe House picks up the story of the Archer family seven years after the events recounted inNo Time for Goodbye

Promise Falls Trilogy – Broken Promise – Book #1

Barclay’s most recent project has been a trilogy featuring the happenings in Promise Falls, NY.

The trilogy began with the novel Broken Promise. InBroken Promise David Harwood and his son Ethan return to their hometown of Promise Falls.David and Ethan were two of the central characters in Barclay’s page-turner   Never Look Away. Soon after David’s return he finds himself in the midst of a family scandal. His cousin Marla, had recently had a miscarriage but now she is taking care of a new infant.

Marla says that an angel brought the baby to her. The next day the baby’s mother is found dead and her blood is discovered on Marla’s door! Guess who the main suspect in the murder case is!

Anyway  as David is trying to figure out, how Marla ended up with the baby,and if Marla is innocent or guilty, other things are happening in Promise Falls. Twenty Three dead squirrels are found strung up in the park, Two mannequins are found in car 23 of the ferris wheel at the town,s closed amusement park. While a co-ed a the local college is attacked by a young man wearing a hooded sweatshirt with you guessed it the number 23 on it!! What’s going on??

Far From True Book #2

Book two of the trilogyFar From True brought more questions and tragedy to Promise Falls.Things take off on the wrong foot.At the last show at the Promise Falls Drive-in, an explosion causes the giant screen to come crashing down on the customers. Cal Weaver is a resident of Promise Fall, first introduced to readers in Barclay’s A Tap on the Window.  In Far From True, Cal is hired by the daughter of two of the victims to find out what happened!

Another storyline twisting its way through Far From True concerns David Harwood again. This time David battles with the in-laws of his girlfriend Samantha Worthington. Samantha’s husband is in prison and his parents are trying to take her son away from her. Their first attempt was legal the second physical!

The events surrounding the number 23 continue to occur around Promise Falls. The question arises was the collapse of the drive-in a terrorist attack or is it associated with the 23 events? More 23 events do occur that involve a bus!!

The Twenty Three – Book #3  – (Book 46 of 2016)

The Twenty Three is the third book in the trilogy and its a good one! On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, May 23rd the town of Promise Falls wakes up to a full blown catastrophe. Hundreds of people are heading to the hospital with flu-like symptoms. Dozens are dying.. It quickly appears that the cause may be the water supply. But who would benefit from the poisoning of the town?

Two other stories flow though The Twenty Three. The first revolves around the murders that have occurred in Promise Falls. The murders started with Olivia Fisher. The next  victim  was Rosemary Gaynor. In The Twenty Three  the victim is a Thackery College co-ed. All three of the women  were killed by a stab wound across their stomach.The fatal wound in all of the cases was shaped like a smile. Since the second murder, Detective Barry Duckworth has insisted that there is a connection between the murders. Certainly now the murders appear to be connected. But, are these murders also associated with the twenty-three occurrences?

The second story involves  David Harwood and Samantha. Samantha and her son are missing and Samantha’s husband has escaped from prison. David is frantic to find them and make sure they are okay!

Bottom Line :

I give The Twenty Three 4 to 5 stars

Too many people died in The Twenty Three to make this a pleasant visit to Promise Falls.

But the story was interesting and exciting. I enjoy the residents of Promise Falls. From the ex-mayor Randy Findley, who sees every event as a campaign opportunity to Detective Barry Duckworth , who never met a donut he didn’t like!

These books form a trilogy! Reading them in order is the best way to enjoy them!

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About Linwood Barclay

Linwood Barclay is a New York Times bestselling author and a master of the “suburban thriller.” Born in the United States but raised in Canada, he spent three decades as a journalist and popular columnist for the Toronto Star before turning to fiction full-time.

He is best known for his ability to take ordinary, relatable people and throw them into terrifying, high-stakes situations. Since his breakout hit No Time for Goodbye in 2007, he has published over twenty novels, including the acclaimed Promise Falls trilogy. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife, Neetha.

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The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton was just as good the second time around!

One of the things that I have been doing on a fairly consistently this winter and into the spring is reading, I have set a goal that requires me to read books at a faster pace than last year and while i on a pace that is slightly slower than I need it to be, I am still reading at the same pace as last year finishing book 15 of the year just about on the same day as I finished book 15 last year!

Now one of the things that I did do recently that is out of the ordinary is that I reread a book! When ever my wife wants me to get rid of books she always says that I should get rid of them because I never reread a book! Well, while she will have to change that to you almost never reread a book, because I reread Steve Hamilton‘s The Hunting Wind a last week!

One of the reasons that I reread the book was that when I checked my Goodreads shelf for the book it was not there! The status was “want to read”!

When I started rereading the book which is book #3 in Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight series, I didn’t remember the storyline. The adventure begins when Alex’s former minor league teammate, from his days thirty years prior as a catcher with the Toledo Mud Hens, visits Alex’s home in Paradise, in Michigan’s upper peninsula and wants him to help find a girl he dated for ten days way back in 1971!

As Alex and Randy start their search for Maria who was the daughter of a fortune-teller Madame Valeska, they discover that Maria is in hiding. Maria is hiding from her dead husbands former business partner, who Maria believes murdered her husband and now is out to get her! But soon it appears that all is not as it seems to be and maybe it never was??? I think that it took until somewhere in the middle of the book that things started to become familiar and even when they did things still weren’t all that familiar, i.e. I didn’t remember the ending, which by the way is very good!!

Steve Hamilton’s first book to feature Alex McKnight a former Detroit police officer for eight years,now living in Paradise, MI, A Cold Day in Paradise won both an Edgar and Shamus award which was an unprecedented feat! The series is now up to book number 10 Let It Burn, which I think I once checked out of the library but did not read!  Alex is a great character and the surrounding cast in the series is also very good.  While Alex’s friend Vinnie is not featured in this book Jackie and the Glasgow Inn are present.

Bottom line: The Hunting Wind is a real page-turner even when I kinda knew what was going to happen. Like I said Alex is a great character and the story line twists and turns enough to keep the pages flying by. So check it out!

As for rereading a book it was a pleasant experience. It appears that I most likely read The Hunting Wind in 2004, as that’s, when I read books 1,2 and 4. So maybe the key to rereading books is that it works real well for books I’ve read 10 or more years ago!! Let’s see that would put most of the Robert Ludlum in play and many, many more!!

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The Forgotten Room – Lincoln Child (Jeremy Logan #4)

The Forgotten Room is the fourth book in  Lincoln Child’s series featuring enigmalogist Jeremy Logan. While I have read many of the books in the Pendergrast series, which Child writes with Douglas Preston, this is the first of his solo books, that I have read.

The setting of the book is a Gothic Mansion in Rhode Island that is the home of the elite think-tank The Lux.  Jeremy returns to the Lux, where he was a resident for many years, before he was asked to leave, to help determine what happened to one of the Lux’s top scientists. The scientist began to exhibit strange behavior several weeks prior, and ended up committing suicide in a horrific manner. The erratic behavior started soon after the scientist was asked to direct the remodeling of the forgotten West Wing of the mansion. Soon after Logan begins his investigation he discovers a room hidden within the wing. The room has no windows or doors leaving no means to enter or leave the room. In the middle of the room was a piece of equipment unlike anything Jeremy has seen! What does it do? What is the purpose of the room and does it have anything to do with the death of the scientist or the sights and sounds that others, including Jeremy are experiencing? So Jeremy and the scientist’s assistant set out to find out what’s happening before someone else dies.

While I don’t think that The Forgotten Room is one the same level as the popular Pendergrast series, I do think it’s a damn good read. Many of the things that have happened at the Lux including voices that lead people to contemplate suicide, remind me of Patrick Lee’s book Runner. Overall,I enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot more than the character of Jeremy Logan. That may be because I haven’t read any of the previous novels in which he appears.So to really enjoy the series I think I’ll need to go back and read the first book! Here’s what are some others have to say about The Forgotten Room

“Reflects the best of the ‘mad scientist and locked room’ mysteries of the early twentieth century . . . Fun and intriguing.” —Associated Press

“Chilling. . . . Child makes the most of the creepy setting, his unusual lead character, and an intricate plot.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“[A] very imaginative story for those who prefer a soft blending of mystery and paranormal.” —Booklist

An interesting sidelight of the book was that at one point in the book the  neurological phenomenon of synesthesia became a part of the story line. In one form of this phenomenon people see numbers and letters as being different colors, others see time as a 3 dimensional time-line. In others at time inanimate objects seem to exhibit emotions. The condition was studied extensively in the 18th and 19th century but interest dropped off in the 20th century. What’s interesting or odd is that one of the other books that I was reading at the same time was The Toaster Oven Mocks Me by Steve Margolis. That book was a mini-memoir from Margolis who has the disorder and throughout most of his life he never told anyone about what he saw or heard because he thought they would just think he was crazy.  I just thought I’d throw that in because I thought that it was amazing that I was reading two books at the same time that mentioned synesthesia!

Bottom Line: While I didn’t find The Forgotten Room all that chilling or creepy, I did find the intricate plot enjoyable and the pages flew by fairly quickly. The book can be enjoyed without having read the other books. The question is though would I have enjoyed it even more if I knew more of Logan;s back story? As such,  I will probably read another book in the Jeremy Logan series. Maybe first though, I’ll read a Douglas Preston’s solo books. I have read one of Preston’s solo efforts The Codex, which I enjoyed! (Book 14 of 2016)

Links for the Further Exploration of the Novels of Lincoln Child

Author’s Website
Facebook
Goodreads
Amazon
Preston and Child

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