"Broken Promise" by Linwood Barclay - Child of Mystery

No matter how settled we may get in any given city through all our years of moving around, there's nothing out there that will ever come close to replicating the sensation our childhood homes can bring.

For most of us, the places we grew up as children serve as the starting point, the zeroth coordinate of our existence, the safe haven we can always retreat to when things go sour in life.

That's precisely what David Hardwood does in Linwood Barclay's Broken Promise, only upon reuniting with his cousin in his childhood hometown of Promise Falls, New York, he founds it corrupted in ways that will test him to his very limits. More precisely, as he comes back he learns that his cousin Marla has been raising a child that is not her own, a baby she claims was left on her doorstep by an angel.

Unfortunately, the child's real mother is soon found murdered, complicating the whole scenario a great deal and pushing David to unravel the bloody mystery that fell into his lap. Who is the child's mother? Why did she have to die? And who unleashed the ominous cloud of death and vengeance unto the town?

The first thing that jumps to the eyes when reading this book is Barclay's main strength, and that is character development. He is quite masterful at building his story's actors from the inside out, describing their internal world in great detail.

The people he makes are very realistic and believable, all flawed in their own special ways, with virtually none of them being susceptible for classification as either outright good or evil. On the contrary, like in the real world, most fall in the grey area on the spectrum of morality, simply trying to do the best with what they have.

What's more, Barclay's characters have very interesting arcs, their interactions with each other leading to some brilliant development that certainly won't leave you indifferent to the characters' fates. Some of them are quite complex and one can't help but feel very mixed emotions for them, making the story that much more enthralling.

As far as the plot itself goes, it has to be said that the whole mystery and trail of events are somewhat convoluted with a large number of different threads to follow. Barclay seems to be a bit less apt when it comes to story structure, exploring many different paths at the same time, with many of them unfortunately being dead ends that ended up adding little, if anything at all to the story.

As the reader there is a certain struggle to keep up with everything, especially when it's rather unclear which elements are going to be pertinent to the big picture and which ones will be best left forgotten. It needs to be added that despite that, the main storyline is a solid and engrossing one, really tugging at your curiosity.

All in all, while Broken Promise isn't a perfect thriller and leaves many questions that need to be answered, it is the first part of a trilogy and on the whole, it seems like a rather promising one.

Fans of Barclay and those who enjoy more convoluted murder mysteries should definitely give it a shot; no matter what, you're guaranteed a good deal of entertainment.

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Linwood Barclay Personal site Known by most people out there as a humorist, Linwood Barclay has had a number of different lines of work in his life, but judging from recent events, it seems he settled on author more than anything else. And that’s a good thing too as he has a real knack for it, giving life to widely-acclaimed novels such as A Tap on the Window and Too Close to Home.