Review: No Time For Goodbye

One of the top delights in book reviewing is discovering a gem; a book that pushes the bar just a little higher, and that is exactly what No Time for Goodbye does. The biggest surprise for this reviewer is that I’d never read this Canadian author Linwood Barclay - which made the discovery just that little bit sweeter.

No Time for Goodbye has one great premise, one that locks you into the narrative. It kept me desperately strapped into the world Barclay created, with a cast of real people trapped in a terrifying and totally extraordinary situation. Fourteen year old Cynthia Bigge is a troublesome young girl, out late with her boyfriend Vince Fleming – a bad boy that her family dislike as his family are criminals. While in the back of a car with a case of booze, they are spotted by her father Clayton, who hauls her back home. So after a huge family row fuelled by the booze she shared with Fleming, she storms into her bedroom, locks the door and falls into a deep sleep. In the morning and full of remorse, she struggles downstairs, head throbbing only to find that her mother Patricia, father Clayton and older brother Todd have vanished; no note, no signs of life or clue as to their whereabouts – she starts to worry. She has good reason for her anxiety as twenty five years later their disappearance remains a complete mystery.

Fast forward a quarter of a century. Cynthia Bigge is now Cynthia Archer, married to High School English Teacher Terry Archer, sharing their modest house in Hartford New England with their young daughter Grace. Terry has coped throughout their marriage with Cynthia’s longing to find out what happened to her family. Naturally rumours of a serial killer abducting them, or involvement with a criminal gang and most worrying the accusatorial finger of suspicion that Cynthia herself was somehow involved trouble her. Her husband Terry tries his best to console and support Cynthia, even when she insists that she appear on a Reality TV program called ‘Deadline’ where they re-enact the disappearance, 25 years on, in the hope to jog someone’s memory. Terry however knows the reality is that TV Producer Paula Malloy is really chasing ratings using the public’s ghoulish voyeuristic nature for tragedy.

Supporting Cynthia, Terry and their daughter Grace is Tess Burman, Cynthia’s elderly aunt and her only living relative. After her family vanished, Cynthia was brought up by her aunt Tess, so their bond is very strong. Cynthia tells Terry that Tess struggled to raise Cynthia, not just emotionally, but also financially as she had a modest job, but somehow she ensured Cynthia got through university and graduated. It was at university that Terry met Cynthia and after a short courtship they married and settled back to New England. When Grace was born, Cynthia gave up her career to look after her daughter. Money is tight in the Archer household as Terry is a high school teacher, but loves his job, with the Principal Roland “Rolly” Carruthers a personal friend to not only Terry, but also Cynthia. A number of Terry’s students are difficult but he takes his teaching role very seriously and helps the disadvantaged pupils like Jane Scavullo, a troubled teenager who Terry encourages in her reading and creative writing.

So that’s the set-up, and then things start to go seriously south for the Archer family. Cynthia notices a Brown car in the neighbourhood following her and Grace, as she walks her to school. Fearful for her daughter’s safety, she starts projecting her paranoia onto Terry. They visit her aunt Tess, who in confidence speaks to Terry and tells him a secret that she has kept from Cynthia all these years. On their return from visiting Tess, they discover their house has been broken into, and left on their kitchen table is a tatty black fedora hat - the same type of hat that Cynthia’s father Clayton used to wear. The tension is ratcheted another notch, as Cynthia is now convinced that her family are not dead. She persuades Terry to engage the services of Denton Abagnall – a private investigator to re-examine what happened that fateful night twenty-five years ago.

The trail will lead to several deaths, with the PI unearthing the dangers of the past that perhaps should have been better off left well alone. Cynthia starts to lose her sanity as she keeps seeing figures from her past; even glimpsing what she believes is her dead brother Todd.

When the Archers find a letter and map in their house indicating where Cynthia’s long lost family are “hidden”, the police sit-up and take notice because the note seems to have been typed on Terry’s ancient Smith-Corona. Cynthia flees with Grace leaving Terry to question everything. He has no option but to pick up the leads left by Abagnall, the PI which points back to Cynthia’s ex- boyfriend the bad boy Vince Fleming.

Like the best thrillers, this is a very difficult book to review, because to reveal too much will spoil not only the journey that Terry Archer has to endure, but also the twisting conclusion which is like walking on quicksand.

When the tenacious Police Detective Rona Wedmore is assigned to the case, she discovers from the map left in the Archer’s house, a car and two decomposed bodies in a lake facing a quarry-edge, the past comes sharply into focus for the Archer family. But before the DNA results can be formed, more danger comes to the Archer family, in the shape of mysterious figures who are no longer content to remain in the past, because they want to secure the future, a future that involves death.

It seems that the disappearance of Cynthia Bigge’s family was far more complex than even Cynthia’s wildest suppositions, and that the past is far closer than she imagined. Terry however finds himself at the door of a very nasty sociopath who has trapped accomplices under an evil shadow, which is as banal as it is deadly.

The finale has a double twist, which even fooled this hardened reader of thrillers, and gave my spine a chill that required a sweater in the early hours of the morning, while my brain was addled by the caffeine hit, and revelations at the books conclusion. The final chapter that ends this masterwork made my eyes moisten, and my heart slow.

In the world of thriller novels, sometimes danger lurks not at the end of a commando unit clutching Uzi machine pistols, but from the point of a handgun or knife held by people who you know. Perhaps also some of your family harbour secrets that could be your undoing. They say ‘blood is thicker than water’ when describing family relationships, but in this novel it’s the family that end up bloody.

In a world of staggering choice when it comes to your reading material, this chilling little book sits right at the top of the genre – anyone not riveted by this tale and the emotional punch it carries must be made of stone, because despite its dark premise, it has real heart. I loved it totally.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Ali Karim - RAM

Book Review: No Time For Goodbye