Fear the Worst

June 29, 2009
In Barclay's new thriller, Tim Blake, a car salesman in a Honda dealership in Milford, Conn., has more troubles than a Yugo up for its inspection sticker: his wife has left him to shack up with a car dealer rival; he has a devil-wears-Prada–style boss; and, worst, his teenage daughter, Sydney, has disappeared from her summer job at the Just Inn Time hotel. Barclay does a decent job of depicting the fright, fantasies and rage of a parent whose child faces prolonged and uncertain danger, but the narrator exists chiefly as a sketch or plot device rather than a complex, compelling individual. The author explores a timely social issue, human trafficking, but the villains behind it are even less defined than the narrator. Still, Barclay (Bad Move
) earns a solid A for his page-turning plot. In short, this is a functional stripped-down Civic of a book that gets you there.

June 1, 2009
A daughter's mysterious disappearance thrusts her father into the world of violence and deception that lurks just below the surface of his nondescript Connecticut suburb.

Okay, so maybe the Blakes' family life hasn't always been perfect. Tim sells cars for a living and is pretty good at it, but his disastrous attempt at running his own dealership led to a divorce from Susanne. Still, their daughter Sydney seems happy enough while spending the summer with her father, hanging out with friends and working part-time at a local motel. So when Syd fails to appear for dinner one night after getting into a small fight with Tim, everyone assumes she's just left for a bit to cool off. But when time passes and she still hasn't returned, her father starts digging around, only to discover that the folks at the motel where Syd worked claim never to have heard of her. Soon a bewildered Tim finds himself in over his head, in trouble with cops and criminals alike. Tim is perfect as the regular schmo who suddenly finds himself thrust into a subterranean world of crime and intrigue, discovering his dark side as events force his hand. But the author occasionally succumbs to a tempo-wrecking focus on unnecessary detail. Scenes involving cars in particular tend to read like something out of a Honda brochure, as Tim rattles off long lists of features. (When a kidnapper speeds off with him as a hostage, he grabs in panic"the brushed-aluminum passenger door handle.") Other than that, though, the timing is just right, and most readers will find themselves desperate to finish just one more page before putting the book down.

Barclay (No Time for Goodbye, 2007, etc.) has written a page-turning thriller that's intense, compelling and, for the most part, expertly paced.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2009
Tim Blakes daughter, Sydney, is living with him for the summer. The divorced, fortysomething car salesman is thrilled to have her, but Sydney is 17 and chafes at parental control. So, when she doesnt return from her job in an off-brand business hotel, Tim goes there, and the manager and desk clerk say theyve never heard of her. That begins a weeks-long search for Sydney that becomes increasingly dispiriting, strange, and dangerous. At the outset, Fear the Worst seems a routine thriller, but as Tims quest goes on, Barclay weaves an increasingly sly cautionary tale about modern life: parenting mistakes, teenage idiocy that courts tragedy, and the unnerving sense that leafy suburbs are no safe haven from the vilest crime. These are recurrent themes for the author (Too Close to Home, 2008). The books pace is nonstop, lurching from discovery to blind alley and back again, but Barclay also finds time to effectively sketch both Tims anguish and his car salesmans worldview. Fear the Worst may make parents cringe, but they wont be able to stop reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)