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A review by ktglick
Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay
2.0
I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I gave it two stars ("it was okay") mainly because the main plot suffers from the fact that this is more a set-up to a series of books than a stand-alone story in itself.
The protagonist is a journalist who returns to his small hometown of Promise Falls in order to spend more time with his son. Unfortunately, his small hometown is the most mess up small town in all of America (except perhaps, Twin Peaks). Every resident seems to have a terrible tragedy, dark secret or violent crime in their past.
As for our protagonist, he immediately loses his job and gets swept up into a crime that has entangled his cousin. He doesn't seem to get any more time to spend with his son, either, so that's fantastic.
Unfortunately, the plot twists of the main mystery are telegraphed very early on, and it's fairly easy to figure out what's going on. You're left just waiting for it all to unfold. If you're like me, your attention is caught instead by some intriguing side plots that offer up more tantalizing mysteries. So it was with disappointment that I came to end only to realize that yes, the main mystery played out pretty much exactly as I expected and the side plots, were not side plots at all, but set ups for future plots of books in the series.
If you don't mind that the most interesting plot points are not resolved in this book and are eager to settle in for a series, you will probably enjoy this book more than I did. One of the reasons that Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series is so accessible is that while it's a very long series of books, a reader can pick up any of the books and enjoy them as a standalone, while regular readers will come to know the main character and the central coast town where she lives. Broken Promise seems an attempt to force you to keep up with the series in order to find out what happens with the many cliffhangers in the first book, but this has the opposite effect for me. Since the main plot was so lackluster in comparison with these cliffhanger mysteries, I worry that those stories too will suffer once they become the main plot of future books.
I gave it two stars ("it was okay") mainly because the main plot suffers from the fact that this is more a set-up to a series of books than a stand-alone story in itself.
The protagonist is a journalist who returns to his small hometown of Promise Falls in order to spend more time with his son. Unfortunately, his small hometown is the most mess up small town in all of America (except perhaps, Twin Peaks). Every resident seems to have a terrible tragedy, dark secret or violent crime in their past.
As for our protagonist, he immediately loses his job and gets swept up into a crime that has entangled his cousin. He doesn't seem to get any more time to spend with his son, either, so that's fantastic.
Unfortunately, the plot twists of the main mystery are telegraphed very early on, and it's fairly easy to figure out what's going on. You're left just waiting for it all to unfold. If you're like me, your attention is caught instead by some intriguing side plots that offer up more tantalizing mysteries. So it was with disappointment that I came to end only to realize that yes, the main mystery played out pretty much exactly as I expected and the side plots, were not side plots at all, but set ups for future plots of books in the series.
If you don't mind that the most interesting plot points are not resolved in this book and are eager to settle in for a series, you will probably enjoy this book more than I did. One of the reasons that Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series is so accessible is that while it's a very long series of books, a reader can pick up any of the books and enjoy them as a standalone, while regular readers will come to know the main character and the central coast town where she lives. Broken Promise seems an attempt to force you to keep up with the series in order to find out what happens with the many cliffhangers in the first book, but this has the opposite effect for me. Since the main plot was so lackluster in comparison with these cliffhanger mysteries, I worry that those stories too will suffer once they become the main plot of future books.