15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Fame...is no sure test of merit...it is an accident, not the property of man." Thomas Carlyle, August 22, 2011
This review is from: The Accident: A Thriller (Hardcover)
"The Accident' is a thought provoking story dealing with the sale of knock off items by unwary suburbanites attempting to add to their family's incomes. It also details the members of organized crime behind this activity and the revelation that many of these items were made by young children working in miserable conditions in China and third world countries.
The thrilling story tells of Glen Garber becoming worried when his wife, Sheila, fails to return home from night school.
When Glen attempts to follow the route his wife would take, he comes upon an accident and sees that it is his wife's car. Rushing to the car, police stop him and he learns that his wife did not survive and that she was apparently drinking and passed out. Two people in another car were also killed in the accident.
One of Sheila's friends, Ann Slocum, is ordered to meet an unnamed man who wants his money. We learn that Ann had been selling unregistered pharmaceutical products. Ann meets someone and there is a dispute ending with her death.
Glen has lost so much, there has been a fire in a home he was building and the investigation shows that the cause was shoddy equipment. With his business problems, Sheila's death and children at Glen's daughter Kelly's school treating her cruely, he seems surrounded by people intent on harming him and Kelly. He is a most sympathetic character who we come to admire because he doesn't ask for sympathy or give up after having his world crumble around him.
Barclay has written a riveting book about a man who demonstrates how one man, acting with conviction, can make a difference.
This was an easy read but the reader should cancel all of their appointments before starting the story because once they begin, they won't be able to stop reading.
I enjoyed the fully developed characters and found myself holding my breath in parts of the book, saying "Oh No!" and in other parts cheering for Glen's success.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strong example of the "good life gone bad" thriller genre, August 9, 2011
This review is from: The Accident: A Thriller (Hardcover)
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Glen Garber, a stressed out contractor trying to keep from going under, is shattered when his loving, reliable wife kisses him goodbye one morning, heads off to business class and never comes home. She and another family are killed in a drunk driving accident - and she was the drunk driver. As Glen tries to understand how his buttoned-up wife could have been hiding her alcoholism, the rest of his suburban life continues to unravel as well. More deaths follow - his daughter is threatened -- and Glen starts to realize that his entire community is built on a foundation that's crumbling beneath.
Barclay gets a lot of comparisons to Coben, and fair enough. Both of them can set up a happy family and dismantle it in a minute, leaving both reader and protagonist reeling as we try to uncover the truth. There is a difference, though. While he's good at building up tension, Barclay just can't write like Coben (or other top tier thriller writers) can. The humor isn't as sharp, the writing is a bit lazy, and the characters less focused. Most troubling, there's a certain "trying too hard" element, as he juggles plot elements ranging from counterfeit purse parties to toxic dry wall to housewives peddling prescription drugs to lost money in Ponzi schemes. It never comes together quite as cleanly as one would hope - it's a piece of writing where the strain shows. I'll give him four stars because I'm a sucker for a fast story, and he tells one here. But the writing quality keeps him from being on par with the best in the business.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mesmerizing and literate escape from the onset of the autumn months, August 31, 2011
This review is from: The Accident: A Thriller (Hardcover)
Linwood Barclay is the master, not to mention the innovator, of the suburban thriller. He has written an admirable and enviable string of books dealing with those among the well-off who, in the words of Lewis Carroll, must run as fast as they can to stay in place, and what happens when some very strange and unexpected sand gets in the gears. Where Barclay has stepped it up a notch or three in book after book has been with the mystery element of his novels, which, not coincidentally, have become darker and darker with each successive offering.
"If you are looking for a mesmerizing and literate escape from the onset of the autumn months, you need look no further than THE ACCIDENT."
THE ACCIDENT, Barclay's newest book, continues the upward trajectory established by its predecessors. He begins with a truism that is not necessarily unusual in thriller literature: everyone has secrets. In this world, as in ours, it's those little common ones that get you into trouble: fudging on taxes; missing payments on bills; or living beyond means, either by carelessness or by necessity. At a certain point, reality rears its head and one needs to do something drastic, which invariably makes things worse. So it is that THE ACCIDENT deals with the scenario of what happens when the honey wagon loses a wheel and dumps its load, and then some, in the front yard.
Glen Garber, the owner of a small but successful construction company, is having difficulties, what with a soft economy and an employee and a subcontractor who seem to be going off the rails in different directions. A fire that all but destroys one of his construction projects may well put him awash in red ink as well. Those problems, though, pale in comparison to what occurs on a night, no different from any other, when his wife, Sheila, is late returning from an evening business class. Glen and his semi-precocious eight-year-old daughter, Kelly, go looking for her and are horrified when they come across an accident that has left her and members of another family dead. As if this loss was not enough, it appears that Sheila caused the accident as the result of her driving while intoxicated. Such behavior would be totally uncharacteristic of her, so the circumstances, in addition to the loss itself, leave Glen reeling and befuddled.
Within a couple of weeks, a good friend of Sheila's, and the mother of Kelly's best friend, dies as well, in what appears to be a freak accident. Glen's hackles go up. It develops that Sheila did not attend her business class on the night she died. She had a mysterious envelope that she was supposed to deliver, but never did. Now someone wants that envelope very badly and thinks Glen has it. Glen remembers that on the morning she died, Sheila told him, "I have ideas. Ideas to help us. To get us through the rough patches." He is beginning to wonder what those ideas were, and what she was involved in when she died. Glen is curious, but most of all is angry. As more secrets are revealed, Glen is less and less sure of who he can --- and should --- trust. Little does he know that Kelly holds the key to at least a couple of his questions, even if it isn't the one he wants the most to be answered: Was Sheila really at fault in the accident that took her life? Or was her death an accident at all?
THE ACCIDENT is Barclay's most ambitious book to date and, not coincidentally, contains some of his best writing. There is one point, about halfway through, when Glen is on the receiving end of a couple of surprises about his wife --- one after another, boom boom --- that hit with the explosiveness of a two-by-four up the side of your head in a dark and quiet room. The hits and surprises keep on coming after that. But this is not all smoke and violence, by any means. There is one vignette where Glen begins going through the items that were in the purse that Sheila had with her on the night she died. It is one of the best pieces of writing that Barclay has ever done, which is saying something (and those of you who have read NEVER LOOK AWAY know what I mean).
If you are looking for a mesmerizing and literate escape from the onset of the autumn months, you need look no further than THE ACCIDENT.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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