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Never look away
576 pages
A frantic plunge into small-town secrets where an ordinary family outing shatters into a desperate search for the truth.
What it feels like
This propulsive thriller plunges the reader into a dread-soaked atmosphere where the comfort of a warm summer day instantly shatters into a harrowing nightmare. The narrative moves at a frantic pace, mirroring the desperate urgency of a husband and father whose ordinary life has just unraveled. As the suspense tightens, the mood grows increasingly paranoid, weaving the intimate terror of a missing loved one with the sprawling deceit of small-town corruption. The prose is tense and mesmerizing, pulling you through a tangled web of lies toward a shattering truth. It is a perfect read for those who devour high-stakes suspense, delighting anyone who loves watching an everyman pushed to his absolute limits to restore his fractured family.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- frantic
- paranoid
- harrowing
- Tone
- tense
- urgent
- desperate
- suspenseful
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- fragility of ordinary life · small-town corruption · family desperation · uncovering hidden truths
- The writing
- Tense and mesmerizing, designed to build relentless suspense and keep the pages turning.
- The arc
- Begins in comfortable domesticity before plunging into frantic desperation and culminating in a shattering realization.
- Who it's for
- Readers who devour high-stakes domestic thrillers and love watching an ordinary person unravel a massive conspiracy to save their family.
Content notes
- kidnapping
- missing persons
- family trauma
About the book
In this tense, mesmerizing thriller by Linwood Barclay, critically acclaimed author of Fear the Worst and Too Close to Home, a man's life unravels around him when the unthinkable strikes.A warm summer Saturday. An amusement park. David Harwood is glad to be spending some quality time with his wife, Jan, and their four-year-old son. But what begins as a pleasant family outing turns into a nightmare after an inexplicable disappearance. A frantic search only leads to an even more shocking and harrowing turn of events. Until this terrifying moment, David Harwood is just a small-town reporter in need of a break. His paper, the Promise Falls Standard, is struggling to survive. Then he gets a lead that just might be the answer to his prayers: a potential scandal involving a controversial development project for the outskirts of this picturesque upstate New York town. It's a hot-button issue that will surely sell papers and help reverse the Standard's fortunes, but strangely, David's editors keep shooting it down. Why?That's a question no longer at the top of David's list. Now the only thing he cares about is restoring his family. Desperate for any clue, David dives into his own investigation--and into a web of lies and deceit. For with every new piece of evidence he uncovers, David finds more questions--and moves ever closer to a shattering truth.From the Hardcover edition.
Description from Open Library.
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