‘Trust Your Eyes’ by Linwood Barclay

 Published by Orion, 27 September 2012.  ISBN: 978-1409115021

I've seen Linwood Barclay's name all over the place, in bookshops, in airports, on  library shelves, but until now, I have never actually read one of his books. Trust Your Eyes is brilliant and grabbed me from the first page.  Not only is it a fine thriller, it deals in the most sensitive way with mental health issues, though the story is genuinely action-packed.
 

Day and night, schizophrenic Thomas Kilbride roams the world from his bedroom, thanks to an advanced map-reading real-time Google Earth type of programme, and is convinced that he is employed by the CIA to memorize every street of every city in the world, ready for the day when there are no more maps on earth.  On one of his forays to New York, he sees what he is convinced is the murder of a woman standing at the window of an apartment.  As an obsessive, he never stops nagging at his brother Ray – who has come back to the family home after the death of their father – to go back to the city in order to check it out. 

In order to get some peace, Ray eventually agrees to go – and the two brothers find  themselves embroiled with a gang of ruthless killers working on behalf of a man who would be President of the United States.

There is a large and varied cast, but part of Barclay's skill as a story teller is not only the way he differentiates between them all but also how he draws the reader into their lives, even those of the  baddies.  The plot is full of twists and turns, there is plenty of humour, President Clinton has a cameo part and the two brothers are both in their different ways completely believable and sympathetically drawn. 

I genuinely could not stop reading until I'd finished this book.  I can't recommend it too highly, and almost the best thing about it is that there is a long list of other books by the same author, which I am now going to read and enjoy.

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Reviewer: Susan Moody

Earlier books are No Time for Goodbye, Too Close to Home, Fear the Worst, Never Look Away, The Accident, Never Saw it Coming.

Linwood Barclay was born in Connecticut.  He started his journalism career in 1977 at the Peterborough Examiner, moved on to a small Oakville paper in 1979, and then to the Toronto Star in 1981 where he was, successively, assistant city editor, news editor, chief copy editor and Life section editor. He lives in Toronto with  his wife, Neetha and two children.

 Susan Moody was born in Oxford is the principal nom de plume  of Susan Elizabeth Donaldson, née Horwood, a British novelist best known for her suspense novels. She is a former Chairman of the Crime Writer's Association, served as World President of the International Association of Crime Writers, and was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. Susan Moody has given numerous courses on writing crime fiction and continues to teach creative writing in England, France, Australia, the USA and Denmark.  In addition to her many stand alone books, Susan has written two series, on featuring PI Penny Wanawake (seven books) and a series of six books featuring bridge player Cassie Swan.