The SHAME game
A TWISTY THRILLER THAT WILL HAVE YOU GUESSING RIGHT TO ITS FINAL PAGES
Social media shaming is the theme of this supertwisty thriller. It’s set in the fictional town of Promise Falls, regular territory for this author, and sees the return of private investigator Cal Weaver and police detective Barry Duckworth.
To begin with, these two crimefighters seem to be working on very different cases. Cal has been asked to guard a teenage boy who is in bad trouble. Jeremy Plimpton avoided prison after killing a girl while drink-driving in a stolen Porsche. His defence was that he had been so outrageously coddled by his mother, he couldn’t be held responsible for anything he did.
Now he’s been nicknamed the Big Baby, is being humiliated and threatened over the internet, and his family is concerned about his safety.
Meanwhile, Detective Duckworth is tackling the strange case of a young man who claims he has been abducted by aliens. Turns out it’s true that he has been sedated and held captive, but most definitely by humans and they’ve left a strange message tattooed on his back.
To thriller fans it should come as no surprise that the strands of the story tangle before too long – and very cleverly too. Along the way are fractured family relationships, murders, grisly bits and a road trip, as between them the two detectives try to piece together the clues.
What they discover is that someone wants revenge and will stop at nothing to get it.
I haven’t read any of the other Promise Falls books, but this one works just fine as a stand-alone thriller.
I enjoyed the little touches, such as Detective Duckworth’s struggle to stick to his diet in a world filled with temptation, and Cal’s battle to keep his clients off their phones and away from Facebook.
The story is so contemporary, it feels like the sort of thing that could easily happen in real life at a time when we’re so quick to judge others and post our opinions online.
Author Linwood Barclay is a master at twisting and turning his plots. Admittedly, I’m never the greatest at guessing whodunit but still this one had me foxed right until the final pages.