The worst day of Tim Blake's life started out with him making breakfast for his seventeen-year-old daughter Sydney. Syd was staying with him while she worked a summer job at the Just INN Time hotel, and Tim hoped this quality father-daughter time would help her deal with the after-effects of his divorce. When Syd didn't arrive home at her usual time, Tim thought she'd probably gone to the mall to hang with her friends. When she didn't answer the phone, he began to worry.
Before long, the worry turned to panic. And when the people at the Just Inn Time said they had no Sydney Blake working at the hotel, he began to see his life plunging into the abyss every parent dreads most.
If she hadn't been working at the Just Inn Time every day, what had she been doing ? Something she couldn't -or wouldn't- tell her own father about ? To find his daughter Tim doesn't need to simply track her down - he needs to know who she really was, and what could have made her step out of her own life without leaving a trace.
Only one thing has him convinced the worst hasn't already happened: the fact that some very scary people seem just as eager as he is to find her.
The question is: who's going to find her first ?
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Tim Blake sells cars had his ups and downs professionally and now lives divorced from his ex-wife, sharing the custody of teenage daughter Sydney.
When Sydney suddenly vanishes without a trace and the police is unable to help in finding her he seems to be the only person determined enough to visit places she hung around at and interview people who might have seen her besides of his from an accident recovering ex-wife Susanne.
He needs to learn his daughter didn't trust him enough to let him know what was going on in her life, even lied to him about the hotel she was jobbing at and a secret relationship with Susanne's boyfriend Bob's son.
Nobody saw her, nobody even knew her at the hotel she claimed to be working at the desk but soon, it seems, people are trying to get Tim's investigations out of the way. Luring him out of state with faked clues where she might be, carefully placing incriminating evidence against Tim. When Patty, Sydney's best friend vanishes after last seen with Tim and people are found dead Tim has to go hiding from police and those who try to get him and his daughter out of the way.
But things aren't at all how Tim pieces them together and he is in for some surprises.
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During the book I began to admire Tim's determination quite a bit. He went from being the slimy salesperson to the man determined to rescue his daughter with a gun in his hand.
Linwood Barclay again created a page turner that kept me reading for hours in anticipation. Not saying a few things weren't sort of obvious but it didn't hurt the book at all. Fine spun and thrilling the plot itself might not be original but the suspense keeps coming at ya.
Rating:
Visit Linwood Barclay.
Export Trade Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: Orion Books (2009)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0-7528-9747-9
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