Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'What happened?' I asked quickly. 'What the hell happened?'
'I told you. I looked away for a second and --'
'How could you do that? How could you take your eyes of him?'
Jan tried to speak but no words came out. I was about to ask a third time how she could have allowed this to happen, but realized I was wasting time."

Good advice: when in crowds, never look away from your child! Linwood Barclay's thriller Never Look Away (2010) begins with a half-page teaser that mentions handcuffs and alludes to sawing off someone's hand. I guess this is the author's way of alerting the reader that the plot will be full of twists and turns, and that nothing what one keeps assuming while reading the novel will end up to be true.

I love the Prologue - it may well be the most captivating ten-page passage in any thriller I have ever read. I love the earliest (already on page 7) twist in the plot: just when we sympathize with frantic parents whose four-year old son suddenly disappears in a theme park, we learn that it is not the child who has disappeared. A really masterful setup of the plot!

I find the entire Part One of the novel (until about page 70 in the hardcover edition) outstanding. The narrator, a journalist employed by a local paper, is working on a story about a business scam that involves plans to build a private prison; what's more, he discovers that the scam may be related to assuring the continued existence of the paper. He gradually gets to learn that things are not as they seem, including things about people closest to him.

The author effectively ratchets the tension and suspense in Parts Two and Three of the novel. Although I do not particularly enjoy the constantly changing direction of the plot, I am sure that many readers will be riveted by the surprising twists. However, the last two parts of the novel are, to me, a disappointment. The extremely weak ending - implausible, theatrical, and histrionic - spoils the great promise of the setup.

Unfortunately, Mr. Barclay's work follows the pattern typical for a great majority of thrillers, where a second-rate denouement ruins a good setup of the plot (in this particular case - an outstanding setup!). It is as if, having constructed a top-notch premise, the author did not have energy to work on a satisfactory conclusion.

Five stars for the beginning, barely one star for the ending. Which yields the average of

Three stars.


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