Book number 10, is No Time For Goodbye, by Linwood Barclay published by Orion books and is available to buy from amazon in both paperback and hardback
Imagine walking downstairs in the morning and your whole family mother, father and brother have vanished without a word. That's what happened to teenager Cynthia Archer after waking with a hangover and a feeling she is going to be in even more trouble than she was the night before with her mother and father after rolling in drunk. The house is oddly quiet though. When gets down stairs she discovers the house is empty. No sign of her parents or younger brother Todd. Her family has simply disappeared.
25 years later Cynthia is still in the dark about where they went, having not heard a word from them in the years that had lapsed since they went missing. She's filled with questions and consumed with guilt, about the night she came home drunk, did they leave because of her? she has nothing but unanswered questions. Were her family murdered? If so, why was she spared? And if they're alive, why did they abandon her in such a cruel way? Now married with a daughter of her own. Cynthia lives in constant fears that her idyllic family will be taken from her just as before.
She agrees to take part in a TV documentary revisiting the case, in the hope that somebody somewhere will remember something - or even that her father, mother or brother might finally make contact with her. Then she receives something in the mail that makes her wonder if she has made the right decision to pursue this mystery. This is a great story, with plenty of thrills but it is also very well written
This is the first one of Linwood Barclay's that I've read, and it was great. The story flows at what feels like warp speed, and because of this you can skip over some of the thinner parts of the plot, which there is a couple of bits towards the end which are stretched a little thin, but it fits with the story, without detracting from it.
When I read this book I couldn't help myself from finishing it in one day, really it was one sitting, the story's pace just seemed to ebb and flow at the right tempo with enough page turning excitement to keep me hooked all day, With the exception of The Book With No Name there aren't many books that I think should be made in to a film or TV series, but this is one that even after reading the book, I'd sit down and watch in much the same way as I already do with Dexter.
