Bad Move

Rating:
Summary: good stuff
Review: Bad Move is a damn good read. Intricately plotted?fast-paced?and wickedly funny throughout. In Zach Walker, author Linwood Barclay has fashioned an everyman hero, aided and abetted by an utterly believable family of characters, in a story that smoothly escalates from situation comedy to gripping thriller in just over 300 pages. Without revealing too much, the book offers not one but two big payoffs?one that will have you laughing out loud and the other that neatly ties together all the loose ends?both highly satisfying in their way Let the booksellers decide whether to file Bad Move under Humor or Mystery ? fans of both genres will enjoy it immensely. Read it now before Hollywood options the film rights?and before the inevitable sequel arrives. it won't be soon enough.

Rating:
Summary: good stuff
Review: Bad Move is a damn good read. Intricately plotted...fast-paced...and wickedly funny throughout. In Zach Walker, author Linwood Barclay has fashioned an everyman hero, aided and abetted by an utterly believable family of characters, in a story that smoothly escalates from situation comedy to gripping thriller in just over 300 pages. Without revealing too much, the book offers not one but two big payoffs...one that will have you laughing out loud and the other that neatly ties together all the loose ends...both highly satisfying in their way Let the booksellers decide whether to file Bad Move under Humor or Mystery - fans of both genres will enjoy it immensely. Read it now before Hollywood options the film rights...and before the inevitable sequel arrives. it won't be soon enough.

Rating:
Summary: Barclay's debut fiction novel is quirky yet appealing
Review: Linwood Barclay is well known to Canadian readers by virtue of his Toronto Star newspaper column, as well as a number of nonfiction books he has published. BAD MOVE is his first work of fiction. It is a quirky yet appealing work with which a number of readers will identify, undoubtedly making Barclay a well-known commodity on this side of the border as well.

BAD MOVE defies easy categorization, and bless Barclay for that. It is a mystery, yes, but there is a vein of humor that runs wide and deep through it. I was put in the mind of Donald Westlake in more than a couple of spots, although Barclay seems to have wanted to write a gently cautionary tale as well; if he did, he has succeeded.

The Walker family is living in the big city and finds that their comfortable neighborhood is falling, falling down before their eyes. Drug dealers plying their trade, punks on the street corners, hookers on the streets ... things are simply not as they were.

Zack Walker, husband and father to his ungrateful and unappreciative family, is a science fiction writer of some minor renown who seems to spend more time off of the keyboard than on it. Walker is a bit of a safety and security freak, in a family of devil-may cares. He has some insight into his extremes. I was somewhat unsettled to discover him playing tricks on his family to make them observe some basic security rules (locking the door, keeping objects off of the stairs) that I have done with my own family.

Walker, fed up with the deterioration of his neighborhood, gets the idea to move to the suburbs. His wife is initially against it, but after a trip to Valley Forest Estates in the town of Oakwood she is eventually won over (the item that tips her over favoring the move had me howling and is all too true). The Walkers pack up and move. Everything seems to be placid and quiet (and, to the children, maybe a little too quiet), the perfect balm for the afflictions that caused the Walkers to leave in the first place. Except that ... it's not. The builder does not seem interested in complying with the warranty, the family can't eat those great cannolis they used to get in their own neighborhood --- and then, there's the dead body.

Walker, while out for a morning walk, discovers a local tree-hugging activist dead under very suspicious circumstances, made all the more suspicious due to the fact that he and the local developer were often literally at each other's throats. When yet another safety trick of Walker's backfires very dramatically on him, he finds that in the short course of an afternoon and evening he has placed his family in greater danger than they faced in their former urban environs. The law of unintended consequences is in full bore here, as Walker races against time and the bad guys to save his family from a danger he has unleashed upon himself and them.

While parts of BAD MOVE are hilarious, it is by turns very grim and graphic as well. Not every reader is going to be able to make the jump back and forth. It would be worth your while to try, however. Barclay has a keen grasp of the life in the subdivisions, as is demonstrated by the cast of characters he has created and presented in BAD MOVE. Barclay also very neatly saves a plot twist for the near end of the book; I never saw it coming and was delighted when it did. Barclay additionally does a fine job of laying on the irony, making for a most satisfactory novel.

While BAD MOVE may be Barclay's first foray into fiction, it hopefully will not be his last. Barclay demonstrates a fine and steady hand, as well as keen insight into and a canny knowledge of his subject matter, combining those elements with an extremely readable writing style and a highly imaginative yet credible plot. You can't ask for any more than that.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: Promising first novel
Review: Moving from the city to the suburbs should have been great. Science Fiction author Zack Walker doesn't have to worry about his children stumbling over the disposable needles he'd found outside their urban home and his wife gets a first floor laundry room. Sure there aren't the great delis, but that is a small sacrifice, isn't it. Although the suburbs are supposed to be safer, Zack doesn't let up on his perpetual quest to teach his children, and wife, to be more careful. When his wife leaves her keys in the door, he hides her car so it looks like it was stolen. When his children leave their backpacks at the top of the stairs, he pretends to have tripped and broken his neck. These 'lessons' result in him being labeled a 'jerk,' but he can't help himself. And when he sees that purse in the shopping cart, unattended, he has to teach one more lesson.

Author Linwood Barclay does an excellent job planting clues for eventual payoff. Watch the little anecdotes carefully because they just might turn up again--in a much more important context. I thought Barclay's writing started a bit slowly, with excessive introspection, but once he gets going (around the end of the first chapter), the story and characters drew me in.

The story would have been stronger if Zack's actions had been better motivated--especially his reaction to the misguided lesson with the purse. Surely the path he selected would have been among the least likely of actual choices. And the final wrap-up, while adding a nice mystery twist, seemed a bit too cute to me.

Still, BAD MOVE is Barclay's first novel. The enjoyable writing and clever use of clues, plants, and payoffs make him a promising author to watch.


Rating:
Summary: exciting crime thriller
Review: The Walker family used to live downtown. However, when used condoms and needles were found on the street and a five year old girl was killed and cut up and put in the refrigerator, Zack decided it was time to move to the suburbs, where his family would be safe. Zack obsesses over his family?s safety and he goes to extraordinary lengths to teach his loved one how to remain out of harm's way, which usually ends up making them furious at him.

One day when Zack and his wife are at the supermarket, he notices his spouse left her purse in the cart. To teach her a lesson he takes the bag and puts it in the trunk of the car so she will think it is stolen. When his wife comes back to the car, he realizes she is wearing a fanny pack and he stole someone else?s purse. By the time he tracks the owner down, he finds her murdered in her home and realizes he has stumbled into a dangerous situation that puts him and his family in harm?s way.

BAD MOVE is one of the most exciting crime thrillers of the year as the troubles the protagonist finds himself in borders on the slapstick. His obsessive need for safety lands him in trouble with businessmen, politicians and a cold blooded killer who wants nothing more than to murder the hero and read his latest science fiction manuscript. Making all the right moves, Linwood Barclay has a refreshingly original voice that this reviewer believes will turn him into a superstar in the crime thriller sub-genre.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: exciting crime thriller
Review: The Walker family used to live downtown. However, when used condoms and needles were found on the street and a five year old girl was killed and cut up and put in the refrigerator, Zack decided it was time to move to the suburbs, where his family would be safe. Zack obsesses over his family's safety and he goes to extraordinary lengths to teach his loved one how to remain out of harm's way, which usually ends up making them furious at him.

One day when Zack and his wife are at the supermarket, he notices his spouse left her purse in the cart. To teach her a lesson he takes the bag and puts it in the trunk of the car so she will think it is stolen. When his wife comes back to the car, he realizes she is wearing a fanny pack and he stole someone else's purse. By the time he tracks the owner down, he finds her murdered in her home and realizes he has stumbled into a dangerous situation that puts him and his family in harm's way.

BAD MOVE is one of the most exciting crime thrillers of the year as the troubles the protagonist finds himself in borders on the slapstick. His obsessive need for safety lands him in trouble with businessmen, politicians and a cold blooded killer who wants nothing more than to murder the hero and read his latest science fiction manuscript. Making all the right moves, Linwood Barclay has a refreshingly original voice that this reviewer believes will turn him into a superstar in the crime thriller sub-genre.

Harriet Klausner