Linwood Barclay, Bad Guys

Bad Guys

Linwood Barclay

After finding the burbs worse than Tom Hanks (see BAD MOVE), super worrier Zack Walker returns to the inner city with his wife and their two teenage children. He lets his paranoia over the safety of children get a grip on him when his eighteen years old daughter Angie fails to come home by curfew. He stalks the home of her date "Pool Boy" only to be caught and learn his daughter is sleeping in her bed.

Now his daughter is being stalked by apparently Trevor Wylie, a friend of her younger brother Paul, but she wants dad to stay out of it. Meanwhile the Metropolitan reporter is working graveyard stakeouts accompanying private detective Laurence on trying to prevent robberies. However, a peer who shares work with Laurence, Diamond is murdered on a concurrent stake out. As Zack investigates the homicide, he also stealthy tries to stop the stalker bothering his daughter; all this and more fears without taking medication.

Zack is as nutty and paranoid as ever over the safety of his family as he sees bad doers under every rock. The humorous story line grips readers once they realize how foolish Zack takes things (never dawned on him to check whether his daughter was home) and never slows down until he places himself at risk from a killer and the stalker. Linwood Barclay provides a wonderfully jocular Noir starring a sympathetic Don Knotts like lunatic who no one understands. His wife threatens to use a pillow on him while he sleeps if he does not back off from his driving his family crazy over their wellbeing.

Harriet Klausner