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No Safe House Linwood Barclay Books

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No Safe House Linwood Barclay Books

In 2008 author Linwood Barclay made a major splash on the mystery/thriller scene when his novel NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was nominated for Best Novel by the International Thriller Writers Association. Up until that time the Canadian author had modest success with a series of serio-comic novels that followed years as a Toronto-based journalist.

NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is easily one of the Top 5 thrillers I have ever read. That being said, I approached the sequel --- NO SAFE HOUSE --- with trepidation. As eager as I was to revisit these characters there remained the fear that the magic of the first novel would not be achieved again. I am pleased to say that NO SAFE HOUSE holds up well under my personal scrutiny.

The premise of NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was a tragic event from the past that blows up in the face of the protagonist, Cynthia Bigge. Now married to an English teacher named Terry Archer, Cynthia experienced a horror in her youth that she has been unable to get past. She woke up one morning in 1983 to find her family --- mother, father and brother --- had completely vanished without a trace. The truth behind that event threatens Cynthia and her own family in present day and she is only able to solve the puzzle by calling on the aid of a former boyfriend and now local criminal, Vince Fleming.

NO SAFE HOUSE finds Cynthia and Terry attempting a mutual separation. Cynthia's anxiety issues from the scars of her past have resulted in her harming their daughter, Grace. As Cynthia lives alone in a self-imposed exile things start to get weird again for the Archer's. To begin with, Grace is mixed up with a 'bad boy' named Stuart who is the son of one of Vince Fleming's gang. Stuart coaxes Grace to break into a house with him in the attempt to borrow a vehicle. The end result is the two teens finding someone else in the house and guns are fired.

Grace calls her father to come and rescue her. She spills the whole story to Terry and indicates that Stuart is missing and possibly shot by herself. Terry enters the same house in an attempt to find evidence and comes up empty. However, this was no random house. It turns out that Vince Fleming and his criminal enterprise have selected various houses in the Milford, CT, area for the purpose of using them to store stolen merchandise. Everything from money to weapons to crystal meth have been hidden in these allegedly safe houses.

The moral of this tale is that no house is ever truly safe. When an outside team of bad people go in search for some of the items hidden away in one of these safe houses they leave a trail of bodies and mayhem in their path. It is only when Vince Fleming's step-daughter Jane is abducted that the reality of the safe house issue comes to light. Unfortunately for the Archer's they are dragged directly into the middle of this crime spree. Not only was Grace in one of the safe houses at the time a crime was committed but their own home is being used to hide illegal merchandise.

NO SAFE HOUSE plays out like an episode of "Breaking Bad" whereby everyday people are pushed to do unimaginable things and the fine line between good and evil is crossed. Barclay's use of upscale Milford is reminiscent of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" where the shroud of a seemingly picket-fence, all-American town is pulled back to reveal the dark underbelly that lies beneath the surface. Extremely readable and constantly unpredictable --- NO SAFE HOUSE is another winner for Linwood Barclay.

Reviewed by Ray Palen for New Mystery Reader


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No Safe House Linwood Barclay Books Reviews

This is not the best by Linwood Barclay. The book started strong, but wore out into clichés, the loveable gangster Vincent. I suspect gangsters are never loveable. They are psychos and perverts.

Barclay does not know what to do with women. At first the female protagonist is complex and interesting but later in the book the interest level wanes as if the female lead is magically cured of her conflict. Barclay got the female lead correct in “Never Look Away” and the prequel to this book “No Time for Goodbye”. But the last few books seem hurried like he has to hit his publishing date.

One thing that really bugs me about a “thrillers” is the captivity scene. At some point, the bad guy holds the good guy, or the good guy’s wife, or the good guy’s kid with a gun. Then the author uses this scene to give exposition by having the bad guy brag about the brilliance or the righteousness of his crime. Authors wake up. This shortcut has been worked to death. Find a better way of explaining the crime. While I am ranting, no magic ‘I found it on the “computer/internet/secret government databases”’ either. Simplify the story if you have to, just don’t take shortcuts. The denouement should follow organically from the plot. The hero has to guess the hidden knowledge from non obvious clues. See Agatha Christie. Although I will allow the hero to have special knowledge, the audience should be aware of this knowledge capability.

One thing I do like about Linwood Barclay is the simplicity of his sentence structure. I like that. A five word sentence that very clearly expresses an idea is great. Keep the language simple. This is not poetry. This is a story. Concentrate on telling the story with a beginning, a middle, and an end that somehow reflects the beginning. All stories should come full circle.

If you are a Barclay fan, you will like the book and be satisfied with your purchase. If you are a little dubious, find the book in a library.
Thirty two years ago, when Cynthia was a teenager, she woke onemorning to find her father, mother and brother had disappeared. Twenty five years after that she and her husband Terry Archer, a teacher, joined forces with her disreputable high school boyfriend Vince to discover what happened that night. That story is told in Linwood Barclay's first standalone* thriller No Time for Goodbye. Now here we are, seven years after the action of that book, and once again the couple crosses paths with local thug Vince as a mysterious couple go on a killing mission.

As with other Barclay books, the action starts right away and the pace never lets up. The characters are well develed and the dialogue is great. Chapters alternate between Terry's first person narration and third person narratives about several other main characters. Barclay juggles it all quite handily so despite the many characters and lots of action the reader is never confused.

This is another winner from Barclay, a marvelously consistent genius at the Everyman-type thriller.

While Barclay has written almost a dozen thrillers that can be considered standalones, the books tend to occur in two small towns/suburbs Milford, CT and Promise Falls, NY, and there is a light overlap pf characters. For instance the Milford stories feature Det. Rona Wedmore and the Promise Falls stories usually have Det. Barry Duckworth, but the stories are not focused on the police detectives but on the everyday people who become involved in intense situations. The Milford novels are No Time for Goodbye, set 25 years after Cynthia's family disappears; Never Saw It Coming, about Keisha Ceylon, a faux psychic who appeared briefly in No Time for Goodbye; The Accident, an independent story in which Det. Wedmore appears; No Safe House, this followup about Cynthia and Terry Archer. So while you can enjoy this book on its own, you will probably enjoy it more if you've read ano Time for Goodbye first.
In 2008 author Linwood Barclay made a major splash on the mystery/thriller scene when his novel NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was nominated for Best Novel by the International Thriller Writers Association. Up until that time the Canadian author had modest success with a series of serio-comic novels that followed years as a Toronto-based journalist.

NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is easily one of the Top 5 thrillers I have ever read. That being said, I approached the sequel --- NO SAFE HOUSE --- with trepidation. As eager as I was to revisit these characters there remained the fear that the magic of the first novel would not be achieved again. I am pleased to say that NO SAFE HOUSE holds up well under my personal scrutiny.

The premise of NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was a tragic event from the past that blows up in the face of the protagonist, Cynthia Bigge. Now married to an English teacher named Terry Archer, Cynthia experienced a horror in her youth that she has been unable to get past. She woke up one morning in 1983 to find her family --- mother, father and brother --- had completely vanished without a trace. The truth behind that event threatens Cynthia and her own family in present day and she is only able to solve the puzzle by calling on the aid of a former boyfriend and now local criminal, Vince Fleming.

NO SAFE HOUSE finds Cynthia and Terry attempting a mutual separation. Cynthia's anxiety issues from the scars of her past have resulted in her harming their daughter, Grace. As Cynthia lives alone in a self-imposed exile things start to get weird again for the Archer's. To begin with, Grace is mixed up with a 'bad boy' named Stuart who is the son of one of Vince Fleming's gang. Stuart coaxes Grace to break into a house with him in the attempt to borrow a vehicle. The end result is the two teens finding someone else in the house and guns are fired.

Grace calls her father to come and rescue her. She spills the whole story to Terry and indicates that Stuart is missing and possibly shot by herself. Terry enters the same house in an attempt to find evidence and comes up empty. However, this was no random house. It turns out that Vince Fleming and his criminal enterprise have selected various houses in the Milford, CT, area for the purpose of using them to store stolen merchandise. Everything from money to weapons to crystal meth have been hidden in these allegedly safe houses.

The moral of this tale is that no house is ever truly safe. When an outside team of bad people go in search for some of the items hidden away in one of these safe houses they leave a trail of bodies and mayhem in their path. It is only when Vince Fleming's step-daughter Jane is abducted that the reality of the safe house issue comes to light. Unfortunately for the Archer's they are dragged directly into the middle of this crime spree. Not only was Grace in one of the safe houses at the time a crime was committed but their own home is being used to hide illegal merchandise.

NO SAFE HOUSE plays out like an episode of "Breaking Bad" whereby everyday people are pushed to do unimaginable things and the fine line between good and evil is crossed. Barclay's use of upscale Milford is reminiscent of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" where the shroud of a seemingly picket-fence, all-American town is pulled back to reveal the dark underbelly that lies beneath the surface. Extremely readable and constantly unpredictable --- NO SAFE HOUSE is another winner for Linwood Barclay.

Reviewed by Ray Palen for New Mystery Reader