Take Your Breath Away - Linwood Barclay

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

A missing woman. A suspicious husband.  A trope you’ve come across dozens of times before, right? Not like this you haven’t.

While away on a weekend fishing trip Andrews wife, Brie, vanishes without a trace. Most assume Andy killed her and disposed of her body.  After all, it’s always the husband, right?  But the police can’t find the evidence to support their myopic version of events, so he is free to move on.

Then one day several years later, an old neighbour thinks he has spotted Brie returning to the house she once shared with Andy. Whatever peace Andy has managed to grasp for himself is about to shatter and his world may be turned upside down.  Again.

As the story unfolds, motives galore are unearthed. People that want her alive, others that need her to be dead. Not to mention her own intent, why return now? And why the brief sightings around town?

Everybody lies.  An adage I’m sure we’ve all heard countless times.  Every single character in this book embraces it with unabashed glee.  Seriously reader, every time you reach the end of a chapter you will wonder, what just happened? The exact sensation that defines the “page-turner” label. 

Shrewdly structured with short chapters, all the characters getting a turn at narration and peppered with excerpts from police interviews, this is fun and fast paced offering in a genre that is drowning in books that claim the same but cannot deliver.

Book Pairing(s): Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris, My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay