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A review by lmt01
A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay
5.0
“You okay, Claire?” I asked.
“Hmm? Yeah, I’m cool, yeah.”
“You seem kind of on edge.”
She shook her head a little too aggressively.
“You’re sure?” I asked, and as I turned to look at her she caught my eye.
“Positive,” she said.
She wasn’t a very good liar.
I’d like to talk about the dominating author of the thriller genre, a certain man named James Patterson who is quite a bit like the McDonald’s of thriller-writing. He is what I’d call a fast-food author: he produces novels are are easy to get into, aren’t too smart, and will, later on, make you question your choices. Some fast-food authors are fairly good, while others…not so much. As mentioned, James Patterson is the McDonald’s of fast-food authors, dominating the industry and luring people in despite knowledge that they are most certainly not in for anything other than short-term entertainment. But the worst part? Patterson seems to have inspired most thriller authors of the modern era! Their books feel like they are trying to replicate Patterson’s style! Going into this book, I was expecting such. However, I was quite surprised to find my expectations defied by Linwood Barclay’s 2013 thriller A TAP ON THE WINDOW, which is not only a thrill-ride of adrenaline but also of emotion.
In the town of Griffon, free of most major crimes due to the violent, somewhat abusive acts carried out by the police force upon those who do break the law in even small ways, private detective Cal Weaver is driving home one night, rain pouring down, when he is stopped at traffic lights. This is when a girl starts tapping on his window, asking to be let in and for him to take her home, nothing more. He is reluctant to do so, but is convinced by two things: the first, the girl’s suspicion that a man is following her; the second, when she recognises him as “Scott’s father”. Cal is taken aback—his son has been dead for nearly two months, killing himself in a drug-fuelled act of mindless delusion—and eventually lets the girl into the car. He learns not only that her name is Claire, but also that, following an event in which he averts his attention for only a few minutes when letting her go to the toilet only to find another girl climbing into his car, she has something to hide and worth running from. The next day, he is questioned by the police about the disappearance of Claire Sanders, daughter of Griffon’s mayor. Weaver soon finds himself involved in a dark conspiracy involving the political turmoil that wracks Griffon, brought by the mayor’s opposition to the police force’s methods, and starts to think that maybe it would have been best if he’d just kept his window up and left Claire in the rain.
Then the first body appears; it’s somebody related to Claire’s disappearance, somebody who Weaver feels he could have saved. Unable to go to the police, unsure of who to trust, Weaver finds himself forced to get his own hands dirty in this case—and things could get dirty for both himself and those who oppose him.
I believed I had ideals, that my behavior was governed by a set of high-minded principles. But as you get older you start to realize every day is made up of compromises. Bending the rules doesn’t seem worth losing sleep over.
As mentioned, I didn’t expect to enjoy A TAP ON THE WINDOW as much as I did, predicting that it would be the equivalent of a modern-day action film like Escape Plan, boasting impressive actors and enough action to make (most) watchers forget that there is only a plot wide as a bit of string. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my first Linwood Barclay novel was much more than just that! Who could have guessed: it wasn’t just a decent fast-food novel, but a decent book! Lo and behold! Anyway…
This may surprised a few of the people who have read this book, but I actually quite liked our protagonist, Cal Weaver. Now, don’t get the wrong idea from that: it’s not like his a narcissistic asshat who thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. However, he isnt exactly what you’d call a good guy, filling in the role of an anti-hero: think Rorschach from Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN (or Zach Snyder’s film adaptation). Weaver dishes out his brand of justice quite often, though he doesn’t really cross the line to become psychopathic like Rorschach does, though I wouldn’t want to get on this PI’s bad side. Barclay is quite good at making believable and sympathetic characters, something that most thriller authors of the modern age—excluding David Baldacci and John Connolly, who started writing before the 2000s—forsake.
I also liked how Barclay blended dry humour with quite a bit of dark cynicism in terms of humanity. Take this passage, for example:
Finally, I settled on some news out of one of the Buffalo stations.
Three people were mugged outside a liquor store in Kenmore. A West Seneca man ordered his pit bull to attack a woman, who’d required thirty stitches. The dog’s owner told police she had “looked at him funny.” There was a “pedal-by” shooting in Cheektowaga. A man on a bicycle fired three times at a house, hitting the shoulder of a man who’d been sitting on his couch watching an old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Two men were rushed to Erie County Medical Center after getting shot coming out of a bar. A credit union on Main Street was robbed by a man who’d handed the teller a note saying he had a gun, although none was seen. As if all that weren’t enough, Buffalo police were looking for three teens who, after stabbing a fourteen-year-old boy behind a house on LaSalle Avenue, poured gasoline on him and then tossed a match. The kid was in the hospital, still alive, but no one expected him to last long.
And that was just tonight.
A shade bleak, right? Well, if you agree, then it might surprise you to learn that there were a few moments in A TAP ON THE WINDOW where I actually laughed out loud; while not a comedy, there is quite a bit of humour sprinkled throughout this thriller. While you have authors like Patterson trying to charm you over with his characters telling “jokes” or being “witty” in ways that just make them look like dickheads, Barclay uses dry sarcasm or genuine wits to make light of the darkness, though the ending is probably one of the most devastating that I have read in a while.
And, of course, there is no shortage of darkness coming from the loss of Weaver’s son. Seriously, some of the passages about his son’s death are quite depressing, especially when confronting what happens to those left behind.
But there must have been part of us that thought—I know this was true on my behalf—that while things were bad, they weren’t that bad. Millions of kids got into trouble in their teenage years and came out the other side. I wasn’t high much when I was in my teens, but getting shit-faced was a weekly ambition. Somehow I’d survived.
We deluded ourselves.
We were stupid
We should have done more, and we should have done it sooner. It ate at me every day, and I knew it ate at Donna, too. We blamed ourselves, and there were moments when we blamed each other.
But I believe that A TAP OF THE WINDOW is, at its heart, a novel about recovery, about what we do to pull through horrible tragedies and how we change as we adapt to what has happened. I don’t know how to describe what I mean without spoiling events or messing something up, so I’ll just say that you need to read it to see it and leave it at that.
Finally, A TAP OF THE WINDOW was genuinely surprising, its twists unpredictable and the last, say, forty pages so shocking and sad that my eyes actually got a little bit wet. Honestly—did not see that coming! That’s probably why I gave this book five stars in the end: because Barclay has guts, and I respect that. I will definitely be reading more of his novels in the near-future, and I 100% recommend this book!
“Hmm? Yeah, I’m cool, yeah.”
“You seem kind of on edge.”
She shook her head a little too aggressively.
“You’re sure?” I asked, and as I turned to look at her she caught my eye.
“Positive,” she said.
She wasn’t a very good liar.
I’d like to talk about the dominating author of the thriller genre, a certain man named James Patterson who is quite a bit like the McDonald’s of thriller-writing. He is what I’d call a fast-food author: he produces novels are are easy to get into, aren’t too smart, and will, later on, make you question your choices. Some fast-food authors are fairly good, while others…not so much. As mentioned, James Patterson is the McDonald’s of fast-food authors, dominating the industry and luring people in despite knowledge that they are most certainly not in for anything other than short-term entertainment. But the worst part? Patterson seems to have inspired most thriller authors of the modern era! Their books feel like they are trying to replicate Patterson’s style! Going into this book, I was expecting such. However, I was quite surprised to find my expectations defied by Linwood Barclay’s 2013 thriller A TAP ON THE WINDOW, which is not only a thrill-ride of adrenaline but also of emotion.
In the town of Griffon, free of most major crimes due to the violent, somewhat abusive acts carried out by the police force upon those who do break the law in even small ways, private detective Cal Weaver is driving home one night, rain pouring down, when he is stopped at traffic lights. This is when a girl starts tapping on his window, asking to be let in and for him to take her home, nothing more. He is reluctant to do so, but is convinced by two things: the first, the girl’s suspicion that a man is following her; the second, when she recognises him as “Scott’s father”. Cal is taken aback—his son has been dead for nearly two months, killing himself in a drug-fuelled act of mindless delusion—and eventually lets the girl into the car. He learns not only that her name is Claire, but also that, following an event in which he averts his attention for only a few minutes when letting her go to the toilet only to find another girl climbing into his car, she has something to hide and worth running from. The next day, he is questioned by the police about the disappearance of Claire Sanders, daughter of Griffon’s mayor. Weaver soon finds himself involved in a dark conspiracy involving the political turmoil that wracks Griffon, brought by the mayor’s opposition to the police force’s methods, and starts to think that maybe it would have been best if he’d just kept his window up and left Claire in the rain.
Then the first body appears; it’s somebody related to Claire’s disappearance, somebody who Weaver feels he could have saved. Unable to go to the police, unsure of who to trust, Weaver finds himself forced to get his own hands dirty in this case—and things could get dirty for both himself and those who oppose him.
I believed I had ideals, that my behavior was governed by a set of high-minded principles. But as you get older you start to realize every day is made up of compromises. Bending the rules doesn’t seem worth losing sleep over.
As mentioned, I didn’t expect to enjoy A TAP ON THE WINDOW as much as I did, predicting that it would be the equivalent of a modern-day action film like Escape Plan, boasting impressive actors and enough action to make (most) watchers forget that there is only a plot wide as a bit of string. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my first Linwood Barclay novel was much more than just that! Who could have guessed: it wasn’t just a decent fast-food novel, but a decent book! Lo and behold! Anyway…
This may surprised a few of the people who have read this book, but I actually quite liked our protagonist, Cal Weaver. Now, don’t get the wrong idea from that: it’s not like his a narcissistic asshat who thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. However, he isnt exactly what you’d call a good guy, filling in the role of an anti-hero: think Rorschach from Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN (or Zach Snyder’s film adaptation). Weaver dishes out his brand of justice quite often, though he doesn’t really cross the line to become psychopathic like Rorschach does, though I wouldn’t want to get on this PI’s bad side. Barclay is quite good at making believable and sympathetic characters, something that most thriller authors of the modern age—excluding David Baldacci and John Connolly, who started writing before the 2000s—forsake.
I also liked how Barclay blended dry humour with quite a bit of dark cynicism in terms of humanity. Take this passage, for example:
Finally, I settled on some news out of one of the Buffalo stations.
Three people were mugged outside a liquor store in Kenmore. A West Seneca man ordered his pit bull to attack a woman, who’d required thirty stitches. The dog’s owner told police she had “looked at him funny.” There was a “pedal-by” shooting in Cheektowaga. A man on a bicycle fired three times at a house, hitting the shoulder of a man who’d been sitting on his couch watching an old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Two men were rushed to Erie County Medical Center after getting shot coming out of a bar. A credit union on Main Street was robbed by a man who’d handed the teller a note saying he had a gun, although none was seen. As if all that weren’t enough, Buffalo police were looking for three teens who, after stabbing a fourteen-year-old boy behind a house on LaSalle Avenue, poured gasoline on him and then tossed a match. The kid was in the hospital, still alive, but no one expected him to last long.
And that was just tonight.
A shade bleak, right? Well, if you agree, then it might surprise you to learn that there were a few moments in A TAP ON THE WINDOW where I actually laughed out loud; while not a comedy, there is quite a bit of humour sprinkled throughout this thriller. While you have authors like Patterson trying to charm you over with his characters telling “jokes” or being “witty” in ways that just make them look like dickheads, Barclay uses dry sarcasm or genuine wits to make light of the darkness, though the ending is probably one of the most devastating that I have read in a while.
And, of course, there is no shortage of darkness coming from the loss of Weaver’s son. Seriously, some of the passages about his son’s death are quite depressing, especially when confronting what happens to those left behind.
But there must have been part of us that thought—I know this was true on my behalf—that while things were bad, they weren’t that bad. Millions of kids got into trouble in their teenage years and came out the other side. I wasn’t high much when I was in my teens, but getting shit-faced was a weekly ambition. Somehow I’d survived.
We deluded ourselves.
We were stupid
We should have done more, and we should have done it sooner. It ate at me every day, and I knew it ate at Donna, too. We blamed ourselves, and there were moments when we blamed each other.
But I believe that A TAP OF THE WINDOW is, at its heart, a novel about recovery, about what we do to pull through horrible tragedies and how we change as we adapt to what has happened. I don’t know how to describe what I mean without spoiling events or messing something up, so I’ll just say that you need to read it to see it and leave it at that.
Finally, A TAP OF THE WINDOW was genuinely surprising, its twists unpredictable and the last, say, forty pages so shocking and sad that my eyes actually got a little bit wet. Honestly—did not see that coming! That’s probably why I gave this book five stars in the end: because Barclay has guts, and I respect that. I will definitely be reading more of his novels in the near-future, and I 100% recommend this book!