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Too Close to Home
Too Close to Home
Author: Linwood Barclay
"The night they killed our neighbors, we never heard a thing." — In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in a house only one door away, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. And you think to yourself: It could have been us. And you start to wonder: What if we're next? Linwood Barclay, critically acclaimed author of No Time for Goodbye, ...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780553590432
ISBN-10: 055359043X
Publication Date: 8/25/2009
Pages: 500
Rating:
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 142

4.1 stars, based on 142 ratings
Publisher: Bantam
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

ReadswhenIcan avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on + 66 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Wow! I loved this book and couldn't put it down. It was great from the very first page. A fantastic rollercoaster ride of mystery and thriller. This story was excellent!!! I love reading stories like this and can't wait until I can find another as compelling and exciting as this one!!! Two thumbs up!!!
jazzysmom avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on + 907 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
This story is a gripper. Fast paced and each page it seemed like had more suspense and something new to add to the idea of "who done it". I loved the way it was written and the way things came together at the end. At first i didn't think this case would be solved but the father was so persisstent, I really like that about him. At the end i learned to love this family, each one for how they felt. I very much liked this book.
valmay avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on
Helpful Score: 2
I am a huge Linwood Barclay fan, but this book was a disappointment. I regard it essentially as a violent soap opera. My biggest complaint is that there were no characters to root for. The characters were basically self-centered and amoral - as befits a soap opera. Linwood Barclay is usually better than this.
reviewed Too Close to Home on
Helpful Score: 2
I have been looking for a new suspense author to read & am so glad i picked this book off the shelf!...was a page turner, i read it in 2 days. I'll definately be reading the rest of Linwood barclay books.
jdyinva avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on + 408 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
This is the best book I've read in a while. Surprises all the way through - the ending was a shock. Great, believable characters. Complex plot. Just all-round fun, exciting to read.
Read All 38 Book Reviews of "Too Close to Home"

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chronic avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on + 23 more book reviews
Hmmm this was my first Barclay book and I'm a bit on the fence about it. I love first person, read a TON of first person (Including Lisa Gardner who excels at 1st person) so I'm VERY picky about my first person. For about the first 1/3 to 1/2 the first person is very clunky and awkward :( but I stuck with it. The last half or so was better (less clunky, better pacing)--mostly because (I think) there was more dialogue than anything.

Odd as my criticisms may sounds, I feel like I had a vested interst in seeing how it all turned out so I stuck with it. Keeping in mind that suspense and thrillers are my #1 genre of choice to read (meaning, I've read a lot and I'm really picky, as in, "Can you pass the Gardner test?" LOL)...There were no huge surprises here...In the end, I'm not 100% sure I bought into all the big reveals that went on. I def wouldn't read any of Barclays older books but MIGHT maybe give a newer book a try to see if the writing/plotting/etc has improved.
reviewed Too Close to Home on + 2 more book reviews
As usual, another good book by Linwood Barclay.
littleroo avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and felt it was well written. This was the first Linwood Barclay book I have read and intend to read his others.
reviewed Too Close to Home on + 18 more book reviews
I was expecting more...seemes a little amateurish...
reviewed Too Close to Home on + 3083 more book reviews
Very interesting, easy to read and stick with until the end, ending not what I expected. I have read his books before and liked them.
reviewed Too Close to Home on + 40 more book reviews
I really enjoyed this book and this author. The writing style is very fast-paced and really easy to read. He does a great job of giving personalities to the characters. You love them or hate them. I was very surprised by the ending and truly did not see it coming. I highly recommend this author and this book.
reviewed Too Close to Home on + 3083 more book reviews
Very interesting, keeps your attention, easy to read and stick with. Outcome not what I expected.
maura853 avatar reviewed Too Close to Home on + 542 more book reviews
An excellent page-turner: great plot, very well-developed, very readable and well-written.

My first Linwood Barclay but definitely not my last. Journalists who turn to thriller writing have a long and illustrious track record for knowing what they are doing: you could argue that it started with Edgar Allan Poe who, when the poor man wasn't dying in a ditch in Baltimore, put in some time as a journalist, of sorts, and in his spare time laid the foundations for modern thriller writing. Graham Greene. Ross MacDonald. Stephen King. Michael Connelly. Steig Larsson. Google it for yourself, it's quite an impressive list ...

What do journalists know about writing, that lends itself to thriller writing? Don't bury the lede. Structure: a story has an engine, and you have to keep it firing over. How evidence presents itself -- and adds up into a story. How dialogue enhances a story. What makes characters interesting, and either relatable or objectionable ... Or, as Elmore Leonard (who was not a journalist, but writes like one) says, "... leave out the part that readers tend to skip. ... If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

(I don't think it's a spoiler to say that part of the plot hinges on the manuscript of a literary novel that, we are told, was a huge best seller, and made the author a Literary Darling. And it's hilarious, it's so bad ... )

In Too Close to Home, Linwood Barclay has a cracker of a premise, frightening and all too plausible. The pages tick over nicely, with a steady stream of clues presented and random revelations turning out to have more importance than first appeared. The ending/solution to the mystery does not disappoint. (All too often, something that has been chugging along nicely falls flat at the end, as you're told that the cat did it. Or the person you suspected, and rejected as too obvious, on page 2.)

This falls in the much-honored category, in our house of "better than it needed to be." I'm going to get my hands on more Linwood Barclay.


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