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A review by weaselweader
Far From True by Linwood Barclay
5.0
“Cut the bullshit. That’s what I’m about. I want to cut the bullshit”
FAR FROM TRUE, the second installment in Linwood Barclays’ best selling Promise Falls trilogy, was published in 2016. So it’s possible that Randall Finley, the ne’er do well attempting to gain re-election to the Promise Falls mayor’s office after an unsavory wrangle with the law involving sex with an underage girl, resembles Cheetolini merely by coincidence. And that campaign slogan? It hardly comes more Trumpian right-wing than that. Well, as a Canadian reader who welcomes any opportunity to make mock of the most disgusting president in the USA’s 250 year history, I suspect that Linwood Barclay knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he created the character! But I digress …
Here’s the thing! FAR FROM TRUE is a genuine barn-burner, gut-busting thriller that will have you turning the pages long past your bedtime. But – and this is a HUGE but – do NOT read it before BROKEN PROMISE, the debut novel in the trilogy. BROKEN PROMISE, FAR FROM TRUE and THE TWENTY-THREE actually comprise a single full length story that would best be enjoyed by reading them back to back in order. BROKEN PROMISE and FAR FROM TRUE don’t really end on what lovers of the suspense thriller or the psychological thriller genre would call cliff-hangers. A much better description would simply be to say that somewhere around 450 pages, the publisher, the editors and the author just decided to call it a day, publish, package it up, sell it as a book and move on to the next title. Tying up the threads and resolving the intricately connected plots doesn’t happen until THE TWENTY-THREE comes to a close, over 1,300 pages later.
In short, don’t read them out of order, don’t read any of them unless you’re willing to read all three, and, for best results, read them all back to back. In the words of the immortal James Patterson, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Paul Weiss
FAR FROM TRUE, the second installment in Linwood Barclays’ best selling Promise Falls trilogy, was published in 2016. So it’s possible that Randall Finley, the ne’er do well attempting to gain re-election to the Promise Falls mayor’s office after an unsavory wrangle with the law involving sex with an underage girl, resembles Cheetolini merely by coincidence. And that campaign slogan? It hardly comes more Trumpian right-wing than that. Well, as a Canadian reader who welcomes any opportunity to make mock of the most disgusting president in the USA’s 250 year history, I suspect that Linwood Barclay knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he created the character! But I digress …
Here’s the thing! FAR FROM TRUE is a genuine barn-burner, gut-busting thriller that will have you turning the pages long past your bedtime. But – and this is a HUGE but – do NOT read it before BROKEN PROMISE, the debut novel in the trilogy. BROKEN PROMISE, FAR FROM TRUE and THE TWENTY-THREE actually comprise a single full length story that would best be enjoyed by reading them back to back in order. BROKEN PROMISE and FAR FROM TRUE don’t really end on what lovers of the suspense thriller or the psychological thriller genre would call cliff-hangers. A much better description would simply be to say that somewhere around 450 pages, the publisher, the editors and the author just decided to call it a day, publish, package it up, sell it as a book and move on to the next title. Tying up the threads and resolving the intricately connected plots doesn’t happen until THE TWENTY-THREE comes to a close, over 1,300 pages later.
In short, don’t read them out of order, don’t read any of them unless you’re willing to read all three, and, for best results, read them all back to back. In the words of the immortal James Patterson, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
Paul Weiss