NO TIME FOR GOODBYE
Linwood Barclay
Bantam
Thriller
Hardcover: 055380555X
Paperback: 9780553590425

Those familiar with Linwood Barclay’s previous novels, take note: NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is quite a different work for him. There is not a trace of good old Zack Walker here, though protagonist Terry Archer, a high school English teacher, could be decent buds with him should their paths ever cross. While the Walker books --- BAD MOVE, BAD GUYS, LONE WOLF and STONE RAIN --- were suburban caper novels, occasionally bordering on the comedic, NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is the stuff of nightmarish mystery.

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.

While Barclay’s work has always been enjoyable and worth reading, NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is in a class all by itself. Barclay is simply marvelous as he appears to repeatedly paint himself into a corner, only to deftly exit through the door that happened to be there all along, in plain view. As I approached the conclusion, I couldn’t help but shout “OF COURSE!” as all was revealed. The author plays fair, providing a clue or two early on as to the impetus behind the disappearance of three-quarters of the Bigge family. But a good deal of the enjoyment of the book is not so much the surprise of the solution but the manner in which Barclay carries it off.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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