It's 2.15am. I need to be up in about 4 hours. But I am about two-thirds of the way through an absolute ripper. The one path leads to a day of exhausted misery , struggling by on coffee and two and a half hours sleep. But the other path... Well, down the other path lies the conclusion to the most gripping pure thriller since Tell No One, one of the a´last "one-sitters" I can recall.
Five years ago, five years younger, I'd have pushed on through. As it was, I was sorely tempted. For Too Close to Home, read "Too Damned Good to Put Down".
In the end I found what amounted to a natural break in the story and turned the light off at about three.
Finding that break was not easy. Linwood Barclay has written a book with more twists than a four foot corkscrew. Every chapter, it seemed, ended with a stunning revelation. It felt like the soap-operaisation of the mystery novel. But unlike Neighbours, none of them felt unrealistic or contrived, but rather a natural turn for an unpredictable story.
Linwood Barclay made his name with one of the best-selling thrillers of 2008 No Time for Goodbye, a story that inspired instant and, largely accurate, comparisons with Harlan Coben, occupying, as it did, the increasingly popular thriller territory in which extraordinary things happen to ordinary people.
He's back on the same territory here, but this is a step up in class from No Time. This is real Harlan Coben territory: A book that grips you by the throat, shakes you up time and again and doesn't let go until the final page is read.
The Cutters are an average family living in up state New York - wife is an events coordinator for a small but celebrated college, husband runs a lawn-mowing business, teenage son schemes about how to get his girlfriend alone and get it on. But his one scheme - hide out in the neighbours' house as they depart for a weekend away - so he can let his beloved in the moment they leave - takes a fatal turn when the neighbours' return home unexpectedly after an hour and are then mown down by gunmen in their kitchen.
The son, who understandably lies about his whereabouts at first, is quickly rumbled and finds himself in the unenviable position of being suspect A before the weekend is done. Suddenly there is a hunt for the real killer going on involving a celebrity local author who may or may not have plagiarised his one great work, a comically reactionary self-obsessed local politcian, and a connected B movie actress.
The action comes thick and fast, and it's, well, it's just great. If you like thrillers, you'll love it. And that friend, the one you don't know what to buy for Christmas, the one who only reads one book a year, he'll love it too. Except, despite the fact I think I've seen it in a bookshop at Heathrow, I don't think it's published until January. So maybe you could get it for his birthday.
