No Time for Goodbye
by Linwood Barclay
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Book Reviews of No Time for Goodbye
Book Review: One of the best thrillers I have read!
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't read thrillers that much. Mainly this is because most of them seem to provide just senseless excitement and lack actual plotline. No Time for goodbye not only raises the bar for thrillers, its also an intelligently written book. Its not just about momentary adrenaline rush, its very well-written too. The robotic quality that so many thrillers have is lacking here, its very human.
The novel is gripping and intriguing. It proceeds at breakneck speed. When I had started reading it, I had not slept properly for 2 days. But once I started on it, I didn't need caffeine to stay awake. The plot served as caffeine for me! No Time for Goodbye deals with the most terrifying thing that can happen to any human. "What If .." - we are so scared of these two words. Linwood Barclay has delved deep into one of the most common fears of the human psyche. What if one day everyone whom you love just disappears, like they had never existed? What if you are left all alone , with so many questions unanswered? The "not knowing" is worse than the "knowing" itself. "What if.."...scary, huh?
Fourteen years old, Cynthia, causes her parents much trouble staying out late at night, disobeying and fighting. One night, there's a huge fight after Cynthia's father discovers her in a car with her boyfriend who is another troublemaker. Cynthia storms into her bedroom, shuts the door and drifts off to sleep. Next morning when she comes downstairs, there is noone there. She tries to convince herself that there must be some other rational explanation but the realization dawns soon...her father, mother and brother have gone without a trace.... 25 years later, their disappearance is still a mystery and it haunts Cynthia's every waking hour. Married with an 8 year old daughter, she is an overprotective mother, a worrier. She still yearns to know what happened to her family. As a last resort, she decides to appear on a reality show called Deadline in a desperate attempt to find her family.
What follows is complete chaos, as shocking truths are discovered which turn Cynthia's world upside down. I felt that Cynthia's trauma, the effect of her family's disappearance has been well-described. We feel for her and sympathize with her. Its stuff of nightmares - all our loved ones vanishing and leaving us behind.... No Time for goodbye was exciting, engrossing and edge-of-the-seat. But it was also an emotional ride. Somewhere while reading the novel, we all will say to ourselves- "what if something similar happens to me?" The very prospect is frightening!
The character development was great too. The author did not compromise with the characters just to add to the action. The readers will genuinely care about the characters. We feel what they are feeling - grief, love, loss, fear and so on. We become involved with the characters. As the novel twists and turns , it sucks you right in and you are hooked until the last page.
Overall:
Intense suspense and brilliant writing.
Recommended?
Yes! Especially if you are bored with thrillers that just provide momentary adrenaline rush.
Book Review: Sub-par thriller
Summary: 2 Stars
No Time For Goodbye opens with teenaged and hung-over Cynthia Bigge waking up to an empty home. Her family, father, mother and brother - having disappeared without so much as a note. Fast forward 25 years, Cynthia is now married with a daughter of her own and the story takes off from there. Well actually it creeps along from there - never a good thing for a "thriller" - one of the major problems with this book.
No Time For Goodbye is reminiscent of books by Chris Mooney and Harlan Coben, i.e. taking an "ordinary" person and putting them in very unordinary circumstances. Terry Archer - Cynthia's husband - narrates the tale of the ups and downs of living with his wife who is still haunted by her family's disappearance. Cynthia believes her family is still alive and "out there", and possibly having abandoned her, i.e. she doesn't have closure. After appearing on a pseudo Cold Cases TV show strange things begin to pop up which suggest that Cynthia may be correct.
To give credit where credit is due the central hook or plot twist which drives this story is fairly ingenious, unfortunately the narrative around it is doled out piecemeal and at times excruciatingly slow, drip by drip as if from an eye-dropper. I also found Terry and Cynthia unrealistic - for instance Cynthia, an understandably over-protective mother, abandons her daughter without a second thought in the middle of a shopping mall to chase a man who looks like her long lost brother. When Terry follows her lead, she blows up at him for leaving their daughter alone in the Food Court. The book is full of such incongruencies concerning our protagonists. Because of this I found it difficult to work up any empathy for these two and at times found them downright aggravating.
The supporting cast of relatives, friends, co-workers and even a therapist, pop in and out of the story and are one-dimensional, supplying the requisite sympathy or asking the obvious questions. All the law enforcement characters are brusque, unsympathetic and incompetent.
The anti-climactic conclusion, much like the book, drags on for much too long. Although entertaining at times I found No Time For Goodbye a sub-par thriller.
A quick note on the "language", something I usually don't notice let alone get offended by. Many of the characters, especially Cynthia and Terry, swear like young teenagers out of the house and testing their foul mouth chops for the first time. Tedious, grating and another minus when reading this book.
Book Review: Resolving a 25 year old mystery
Summary: 4 Stars
Cynthia Bigge is a 14 year old who went on a date with a high school senior who is connected to crime, gets roaring drunk, and when confronted by her father, she has a huge argument with her parents and stomps off to bed to sleep off the drunkeness. When she wakes up, her whole family is gone.
Twenty five years later, Cynthia is married and is raising her own daughter when she starts getting clues about her family. Having undergone such a traumatic experience when she was young has poisoned her outlook and she seems unstable. These clues from the past threaten to destabilize her further. Her husband tells us the story from his perspective and it is easy to see how the various clues and hints that appear out of seemingly nowhere are creating a sense of desperation with Cynthia.
Of course the Archers get the police involved and when they do not do much, the Archers get a private detective involved. The detective ends up getting killed as does Cynthia's only remaining family member - her aunt Tess. This gets the husband mobilized and he starts looking for clues as to what is going on.
While all this is going on, the author threw in an interesting literary device. At the end of every chapter there is a section in which two other people are talking. It is not clear immediately who they might be, but as the story progresses, it is clear that these are people who are involved in the story line. After a little bit, one gets the impression that these people are probably Cynthia's long lost mother and brother, but you are never quite sure till the end who they really are.
The story evolves at a rapid pace and there are some good action sequences as well as an increasing sense of foreboding that builds over Cynthia and her daughter Grace. This mystery thriller positively haunted you as one more layer of information was provided and then another until you reach the explosive ending. It was a great, fun, read, and only the last few chapters made me take one star away. That was because of the parallel plot and twist that were introduced that involve a character that appears in the book as a friend, but ends up being something compeletely different. I felt that this tenuous plot device was unnecessary and detracted from the story line.
I highly recommend this book and enjoyed the very final plot twist - which was a tearjerker!
Book Review: Slow moving thriller focuses on characters instead of twists and turns.
Summary: 4 Stars
Linwood Barclay's thriller NO TIME FOR GOODBYE receives exceptional praise from well known authors on the back cover. Tess Gerritsen, Joseph Finder, and Peter Robinsion all say this book is a suspensful page turner full of twists and turns and that it has a stunning conclusion. One author even compares Barclay's book to those of Harlan Coben. This is very high praise, and some of it is merited and some isn't.
The plot is certainly like one of Coben's. Cynthia Bigge wakes up one morning and finds her entire family missing. Her parents and older brother have just vanished. No note, no message, no trace. Fast forward twenty five years later, and Cynthia is married to Terry Archer. They have a daughter. Cynthia never has heard anything about her family. She's become desperate enough to try one of those TV news magazines that recreates the incident and asks viewers for help.
The Archer's don't have much money, he's a school teacher and she works at her friends dress shop. But they do what they can and hire a private detective. Soon, things begin to happen. Cynthia notices a strange car following her daughter to work. Her father's old hat shows up on her dining room table. She thinks she sees her brother at the mall.
The plot is very intriguing, and the novel really picks up about halfway through, but overall, it moves kind of slow. There aren't really many twists and turns. The plot just moves slowly in the direction of revealling the truth. Instead of twists filling up the pages, Barclay focuses on character development. We really know the Archers and their pain.
I thought the conclusion was revealed too early in the novel, but then the book does spiral to a thrilling ending. The explanation for all that happened is certainly plausible, but the villian's abilities were someone exaggerated. Anyway, this is a good book, but a little slower moving than I expected. I give it four stars, but it is really between 3 and 4.
Book Review: What's Wrong?
Summary: 5 Stars
In recent years, I've satisfied my mystery cravings with the newest titles from Harlan Coben, James Lee Burke, and Brandt Dodson. It's nice to rely on those who put out quality stories year in and year out, yet I'm always looking for another name to add to the list. Late last year, on a whim, I picked up Linwood Barclay's "Fear the Worst," and have since read through most of his earlier books.
"No Time For Goodbye" starts with the chilling details of a fourteen-year-old girl's past, when one evening she returns from an ill-advised date with a neighborhood bad boy, only to wake up the next morning with her entire family missing. Twenty-five years later, that mystery is still unsolved, and her tale is being recounted on a national TV show. This brings about a new spat of clues, some of them from local wackos, and others leading to the dark truth. Told through the eyes of the woman's husband, Terry Archer, we are left wondering about her sanity, maybe even her culpability, and Barclay divvies out tidbits of info with tantalizing skill. The story picks up in the second half, moving from mystery to thriller, as is Barclay's modus operandi. He blends the genres with ease, satisfying those who ache for sympathetic characters and twists and turns, while also meeting the needs of those hoping for a fast-paced climax. One or two items stretch credulity a bit, but it's all forgivable when done with such skill, and I enjoyed yet another book by one of my new favorite authors.
"No Time For Goodbye" was a huge bestseller in Europe and England, and I'm still wondering what's wrong with American audiences. Why haven't they latched onto Barclay's strong characterization, tight plotting, and readable style? I'm hoping that mystery will be solved with his March release of "Never Look Away."