No Safe House Paperback – 7 May 2015

This novel has quite a wonderful collection of criminals. Most interesting of all is Vince Fleming, an old man fatally ill but still capable of thinking and shooting his way out of trouble. Vince has a soft spot for his stepdaughter Jane, who was helped through her difficult teen years by her English teacher Terry Archer.Terry, much against his will, gets caught up in Vince’s misadventures. So does his wife and 14-year-old daughter Grace.The plot is rich in killings, kidnappings, criminal schemes, and close calls. Relationships get complicated, and that adds interest too. Linwood Barclay never fails to deliver a gripping thriller. This is a particularly good one.

Un bon livre, un superbe thriller comme tous de Linwood Barclay, qui tient en haleine de la première à la dernière page. C'est toujours un grand plaisir de lire cet auteur. A quand un prochain ?

j'adore cet auteur , mais ici l'histoire est vraiment très lente , je suis à la moitié du livre et l'histoire va seulement commencer , c'est la première fois que je referme mon livre sans regrets , si vous n'avez pas lu le premier pas de problèmes il y a tout le temps des "flash back " l'auteur en relate les faits très souvent , quand je l'aurai fini je reviendrai , voilà je l'ai fini et j'ai aimé , j'ai eu tort d' essayé de retrouver les personnages du premier car on s'en passe très bien, très bon thriller plein de rebondissements

Okey.Linewood Barclay's lady charactors are allways headstrong and making wrong decisions.And males are allways supporting kind....Too good to believe.This patteren had gone kaput in this novel.This Grace needs a nice spank and duty in public toilets.rotton arrogant idiot girl.Cynthia is stupid ceazy womanTerry is nincompoop henpacked husband.

In 2008 author Linwood Barclay made a major splash on the mystery/thriller scene when his novel NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was nominated for Best Novel by the International Thriller Writers Association. Up until that time the Canadian author had modest success with a series of serio-comic novels that followed years as a Toronto-based journalist.NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is easily one of the Top 5 thrillers I have ever read. That being said, I approached the sequel --- NO SAFE HOUSE --- with trepidation. As eager as I was to revisit these characters there remained the fear that the magic of the first novel would not be achieved again. I am pleased to say that NO SAFE HOUSE holds up well under my personal scrutiny.The premise of NO TIME FOR GOODBYE was a tragic event from the past that blows up in the face of the protagonist, Cynthia Bigge. Now married to an English teacher named Terry Archer, Cynthia experienced a horror in her youth that she has been unable to get past. She woke up one morning in 1983 to find her family --- mother, father and brother --- had completely vanished without a trace. The truth behind that event threatens Cynthia and her own family in present day and she is only able to solve the puzzle by calling on the aid of a former boyfriend and now local criminal, Vince Fleming.NO SAFE HOUSE finds Cynthia and Terry attempting a mutual separation. Cynthia's anxiety issues from the scars of her past have resulted in her harming their daughter, Grace. As Cynthia lives alone in a self-imposed exile things start to get weird again for the Archer's. To begin with, Grace is mixed up with a 'bad boy' named Stuart who is the son of one of Vince Fleming's gang. Stuart coaxes Grace to break into a house with him in the attempt to borrow a vehicle. The end result is the two teens finding someone else in the house and guns are fired.Grace calls her father to come and rescue her. She spills the whole story to Terry and indicates that Stuart is missing and possibly shot by herself. Terry enters the same house in an attempt to find evidence and comes up empty. However, this was no random house. It turns out that Vince Fleming and his criminal enterprise have selected various houses in the Milford, CT, area for the purpose of using them to store stolen merchandise. Everything from money to weapons to crystal meth have been hidden in these allegedly safe houses.The moral of this tale is that no house is ever truly safe. When an outside team of bad people go in search for some of the items hidden away in one of these safe houses they leave a trail of bodies and mayhem in their path. It is only when Vince Fleming's step-daughter Jane is abducted that the reality of the safe house issue comes to light. Unfortunately for the Archer's they are dragged directly into the middle of this crime spree. Not only was Grace in one of the safe houses at the time a crime was committed but their own home is being used to hide illegal merchandise.NO SAFE HOUSE plays out like an episode of "Breaking Bad" whereby everyday people are pushed to do unimaginable things and the fine line between good and evil is crossed. Barclay's use of upscale Milford is reminiscent of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" where the shroud of a seemingly picket-fence, all-American town is pulled back to reveal the dark underbelly that lies beneath the surface. Extremely readable and constantly unpredictable --- NO SAFE HOUSE is another winner for Linwood Barclay.Reviewed by Ray Palen for New Mystery Reader