"The night they killed our neighbors we never heard a thing."In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in a house only one door away, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. And you think to yourself: It could have been us.
And you start to wonder: What if we're next ?
Promise Falls isn't the kind of community where a family is shoot to death in their own home. But that is exactly what happened to the Langleys' one sweltering summer night, and no one in this small upstate New York town is more shocked than their next-door neighbors, Jim and Ellen Cutter. They visited for the occasional barbecue, and their son, Derek, was friends with Langleys' boy Adam: but how well did they really know their neighbors ?
That''s the question Jim Cutter is asking, and the answers he's getting aren't reassuring/ Albert Langley was a successful, well respected criminal lawyer, but was he so good at getting criminals off that he was the victim of revenge - a debt his innocent family also paid in blood ?
From the towns criminally corrupt mayor to the tragic suicide of a talented student a decade before, Promise Falls has more than a share of secrets. And Jim Cutter, failed artist turned landscaper, need look no further than his own home and his wife Ellen's past to know that things aren't always what they seem.
Suddenly the Cutters' must face the unthinkable: that the murderer isn't just stalking too close to home but is inside it already. For the Langleys' weren't the first to die and they won't be last.
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When Derek Cutter's friends family leaves for vacation he looks up to a coming week of having a secret love nest for himself and his girlfriend Penny. He hides in their basement, strolling through the house as soon as they leave. Surprisingly the family returns shortly after and Derek has to hide back in the basement. He hears someone else arrive, listens to a short argument and the first shot, soon followed by two other shots. When the killer leaves the house Derek fleas. But police isn't so stupid: They soon discover the boy was in the house and is arrested for circumstantial evidence.
His parents Jim & Ellen are in shock, trying to understand what is going on. More so father Jim who doesn't believe a single second his boy is a murderer. He begins his own investigations starting with only a clue Derek was able to provide:
A missing PC tower from his friends desk which had a strange but "cool" novel on it.
The boys got it from one of Jim's customers whose son killed himself a decade ago.
For Jim the killing begins to tape shape when he notices that this novel was published two years after the authors death by no other than the college leader and boss of his wife: Conrad Chase. Where ever Jim turns he always comes back to the missing PC tower and the novel.
Very slowly he peels away layer after layer, discovering the women, his wife, whom he slowly began to trust again after a betrayal years ago, has deep dark secrets hidden from him but following his guts, he ultimately figures out the Langleys' were never the intended victim. Instead his past, the towns criminal corrupt mayors and his wife's past come together ultimately facing the murderer of not only the Langleys' but three other victims. But the killer isn't finished yet. He has an agenda of revenge and won't stop until he is stopped.
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Too close To Home is the first novel I read by Linwood Barclay and I enjoyed every single page of it. Very suspenseful the author keeps things coming at the reader that aren't what they seem to be. Jim's character is one of uniqueness but also one of much frustration with life and his social standpoint. He his an artist at heart but no one likes his paintings except his family. So he has his personal punching back Lance who's constantly picking at him about his downfall from working for the mayor to landscaping. He even once, with right, punched the mayor's nose.
However, Jim is good at heart. Fair to his child and people surrounding him. For me a like able, human, character all around.
Impressively Barclay brought in a lot of different stories into this book that made sense at the end and also surprised because in the beginning I thought those are only stories to get the background and kind of personalities who are taking part in the plot. Never did I imagine it becomes vital for the whole story.
Overall a very good book that kept me reading non-stop.
Rating:
Visit Linwood Barclay.
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Bantam (September 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0553805568
ISBN-13: 978-0553805567
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