Left Behind

“It may be a cliché to say that this novel is impossible to put down,” Ali Karim writes today in January Magazine, reviewing Linwood Barclay’s new thriller, No Time for Goodbye, “but for me that was true.” It seems Karim needed only to understand the premise of Canadian author Barclay’s sixth novel (after Stone Rain, released earlier this year) to be hooked:

Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge is a troublesome young girl, caught out late one night with her boyfriend Vince Fleming--a bad boy from a family of criminals, whom Cynthia’s parents dislike. While fooling around in the back end of a car with a case of booze, this pair are spotted by her father, Clayton, who immediately hauls Cynthia back home. Following a huge family row, fueled by the booze she had shared with Fleming, the girl storms off to her bedroom, locks the door, and falls into an all-consuming slumber. Come morning, Cynthia--full of remorse, and with her head throbbing from the drink--struggles downstairs, only to find that her mother, Patricia, her father and her elder brother, Todd, have all vanished. There’s no note of explanation, no signs of life, and no clues as to their whereabouts.

It’s understandable that Cynthia would be worried--and she has good reason, because even 25 years later, her family’s disappearance remains a complete mystery.

You can read the full review here.

One thing that Karim doesn’t point out in his review, but that well-informed crime-fiction readers might note with a smile, is Barclay’s use of the last name Archer in this book. Abandoned little Cynthia grows up to marry a high-school teacher named Terrence Archer, who narrates most of this yarn and manages to put together its puzzle pieces by the final page. What makes this intriguing, is that author Barclay is a longtime devotee of detective novelist Ross Macdonald, the creator of Los Angeles private eye Lew Archer. As Barclay told Bookreporter a few years back:

I’ve been influenced by a great many writers--some funny, some not. I had the good fortune to have two highly respected writers as mentors. Margaret Laurence, a famous Canadian author, encouraged me and became a friend after I got to know her when she was a writer-in-residence at Trent University, where I obtained an English degree. And in my late teens I became a huge fan of the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald (whose real name was Kenneth Millar). I ended up having a long correspondence with him, met him, and he was very encouraging with regard to my writing. His work convinced me that mysteries, often looked down upon, could be literature.

It’s not uncommon for novelists to pay tribute, through their fiction, to people who have inspired them or helped them along the way. Macdonald would no doubt be pleased to see Barclay recalling his contributions in this manner.