Suspense

Richard Boyle teaches 11th-grade English, and during class one morning, he looks out his window and sees a former student walking toward the entrance with a bomb strapped to his chest. He takes matters into his own hands and ends up confronting the bomber, who wants to see three specific individuals so he can complete his mission. Richard ends up saving everyone, but the bomber trips and blows himself up. Now a hero, Richard learns that his actions have made some people angry, including the bomber’s parents and a blackmailer with dirt on Richard, though he has no idea what that might be. In his case, good deeds are punished. To reveal any more of the story would spoil some neat surprises. Barclay immediately turns up the intense narrative and creates a page-turner that could quickly turn toward uncomfortable territory due to its subject matter, but since he is a master, he avoids that realm completely. Instead, we have a psychological and paranoid thriller that fires on all cylinders.

There were so many times when I wanted to yell DON’T DO THAT! at the characters in this dark tale of trying to do right by the ones you love but being tripped up by hapless choices at every turn. The cast is stuck, in various ways, in the orbit of the ruthless Winters crime family. Melissa Cruz, who’s “[smothering] her guilt in justification and Xanax,” is running from an abusive relationship with a member of the family, accompanied by her real love. The Winterses are not taking this betrayal lightly, and they’ve sent Lucky Wilson to find the couple and…well, Lucky is a professional assassin, even if his day job is real estate, so things don’t look good. Then there’s Lucky’s family: his wife, who he believes is having an affair, and his teenage daughter, who’s very much not into boys her own age. The fast-moving and sometimes-comic tale unfolds the back stories of the various characters, beautifully illustrating how bad decisions can be the product of fierce love and how what seems like the worst path might be a redemption. While waiting for this book, you’ll want to go back and try Aymar’s No Home for Killers and They’re Gone, as his writing is just great.

Librarian Martha Ratliff doesn’t expect to marry—isn’t running a public library in Maine satisfying enough?—until she meets Alan. A traveling salesman, Alan sells novelty items like t-shirts (“Math teachers aren’t mean. They’re above average”) at academic conferences. But as sweet as Alan might be, there’s something a bit off. Martha can’t help but do a little research, only to discover that five of the cities Alan visited have unsolved cases of murdered women, with all killed during Alan’s stay. Coincidence? Add to this the blood she finds on one of his dress shirts and Martha’s on the phone to Lily Kinter, a buddy from library school who helped Martha escape from an abusive boyfriend years ago. Could Martha be married to a serial killer? But Lily has her own baggage, and what started as a simple mystery explodes into a fascinating, dark, and complex novel of suspense. Every true-crime reader will find something to appreciate in this hugely inventive novel.