The weaving process is right at the heart of what an author
does. We create the raw materials, spin yarns and throw our protagonists into complicated
situations to see how they’ll cope. The trick, of course, is to make sure that
the reader isn’t able to see the hand of the creator at work.
In No Safe House (US),
Linwood Barclay didn’t quite manage to hide the stitching together of the plot.
He’s an author who I’ve enjoyed in the past and have admired for the way he
turns normal lives upside down in entirely believable and gripping ways.
What’s different about this one is that the succession of
coincidences and unlikely events eventually wore too thin for me to suspend
disbelief. This made the process of getting to the end somewhat mechanical. There
was plenty I wanted to find out about and I was interested enough to persevere,
it’s just that the magic spell was broken and so the impact was reduced.
No Safe House didn’t hit the mark for me. If you’re thinking
about it, why not pick another Barclay from the shelf instead - play the safer bet and see how it shakes down.
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