If you can come up with a unique hook for a story and great characters, then you have a great book called Trust Your Eyes. I would go further and say that not only is it a tremendous book but the best book that I have read this year.
The plot: Thomas Kilbride sees a picture of a woman with a plastic bag over head in a window . Thomas concludes that she was murdered while viewing a website called Whirl360, which is more or less google maps. You can say that Thomas is seeing a psychiatrist because among other things, he has an obsession. He stays in his room all day and looks at this site and has a gift: he is able to memorize street names, maps, and places much like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man.
Ray Kilbride, Thomas’s brother, is an illustrator and he is dealing with his fathers death and the difficult relationship he has with his brother. Thomas’s character is developed perfectly. Thomas believes that he is working for the CIA and speaks with Bill Clinton on a daily basis.
You can see the tension brewing between the brothers many times. Thomas’ irrational behavior when he tells his psychiatrist that Ray needs to take pills so he would stop telling him what to do. Then there was the CIA seeing the e-mails Thomas would send to Bill Clinton.
Once you read this book, you would see that all the characters are memorable. Allison the waitress, who doesn’t pay her rent to her roommate and lying to her mother by saying she needs money because she broke a tooth. All the other characters have some sort of edge in the book as well.
I loved the way Barclay used flashbacks in the book throughout the plot. It was brilliant at times, making the mystery even more intriguing, especially when the murder takes place. By the end of the book, you can say nothing was not as it seemed.
All this lead to a tremendous amount of tension and a surprising finale. This would only continue to the end, as each part of the mystery was a complete surprise to me.
No reason not to give this book 5 stars. Wish I could give it more. This book was hard to put down and I know that it will be a tough act to follow. I will be reading more of Linwood Barclay’s books.
Ron Hummer
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