Family misfortunes

As Maltese we are lucky in having retained the close family ties that, in the process, keep the social fabric intact, even if there have been some tragic instances in recent years that should convince us we cannot take things too much for granted. We are part of the fast-changing, global village and certainly not immune to new threats and dangers.

This latest Linwood Barclay thriller tells the tragic tale of Cynthia Bigge, whose parents and brother vanished without a trace the day after she had a tempestuous teenage argument - the like of which every other youngster in almost every other generation would have - with her father. Twenty-five years later, we find her raising a daughter with her husband, a high school teacher in the same old family town of Milford, Connecticut. She is still haunted by her family's disappearance, so she goes on national television to talk about what happened and plead for clues. In a Maltese scenario, the Xarabank clan would have jumped at her story.

A mysterious phone call leads her to believe that her father, at least, may still be alive, but as her excitement grows, so do her husband's worries. It soon appears that someone is playing an unexpectedly vicious game with Cynthia's emotions, and that her family held secrets she never suspected. Desperately looking for answers, she is suddenly caught in the headlights of the devastating truth. Understandably excited to have caught up with her past, Cynthia finds, however, that her obsession to find the answers threatens to destroy everything she and her family have worked for.

Though some twists in the plot require significant suspension of disbelief, skilled characterisation and convincing dialogue more than compensate. Barclay, after all, is an amazing storyteller who has been acknowledged as destined to be "the next big thing" in thrillers. This suspense-filled work strikes to the core of our most primal fear that is often projected in the question: What if you woke up one day to find your entire life has changed and that everyone you loved has disappeared overnight without so much as a chance to ask why or, to quote the title, to say goodbye.

It is enough to make you want to hold on to all that is precious to you. Barclay's masterful tinkering with personal and psychological trauma has a dramatic appeal in that it injects back into you values you have thought were lost forever.

• Mr Flores is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written books of fiction and non-fiction as well as poetry in both Maltese and English. He was one of the co-founders of the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju.

• A review copy of this title was supplied by ARCO - Allied Retail & Commercial Co. Ltd.