Sunday, January 27, 2013

No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

Terry Archer is married to Cynthia Bigge, a woman with a past. Cynthia was a semi-rebellious 14-year-old when her family vanished overnight from their suburban Connecticut home. She had it better than most would have in such circumstances, being taken in and raised by a loving aunt and later meeting and marrying Terry, a supporting husband who truly loves her even as he is occasionally plagued by her understandable overprotectiveness of their daughter and his fleeting self-doubt over Cynthia's story.

Things come to a head, however, when a television news magazine does a feature on the mysterious, long-ago disappearance of Cynthia's family. Cynthia suddenly feels as if she is being followed; she sees a man at a shopping mall who, she is certain, is a grownup version of her missing brother; and her father's trademark fedora is found resting on their kitchen table. Terry is not completely sure that his wife isn't perhaps making some of it up, as a secondary symptom of some serious emotional problems. His love for her is such, however, that he gives her the benefit of the doubt.

Things are ratcheted up a notch or three when Terry and Cynthia hire a private investigator, whose questions spark a pair of horrendous occurrences that in turn bring the events that began over a quarter century before to a shocking conclusion.

Couldn't put it down. Great characters. While I had worked out the fathers secret before the end, how all was revealed kept me enthralled. 

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