Trust Your Eyes Book Review

I’m a sucker for a really good thriller book. I’ve fallen in love with some of the classic authors that keep the pages turning like Stephen King and James Patterson, and even as a kid I loved the Goosebumps murder mysteries and anything by Caroline B. Cooney. So when Blogher asked me if I wanted to write a review on the latest Linwood Barclay thriller, I couldn’t hit reply fast enough. 

Trust Your Eyes is an intricately woven account of two brothers who just lost their father in a freak accident. Ray is the older of the two, is a successful cartoonist and lives a few hours away while Thomas is a 30-something adult-child with a history of psychiatric care who is obsessed with memorizing maps. After their father’s funeral, Ray decides to temporarily move in with Thomas to care for him and the estate while figuring out the legal issues and as he does so he quickly falls back into old habits arguing with and nagging his brother, deliberately lacking the understanding he knows he should have. While settling into a groove he quickly learns that his brother believes he works for the CIA and is on mission to memorize all the maps of the world using an online database much like Google Earth called Whirl360 where there are photographs taken of every inch of major streets and roads. Oh, and this mission has been assigned to him by former President Bill Clinton.  Thomas spends all his waking hours touring street after street with the goal of memorizing the globe in preparation for a catastrophic natural disaster where all Internet is rendered useless all the while talking with an imaginary Bill Clinton about the mission at hand.

As Ray is figuring out what home Thomas should be relocated to, Thomas observes a murder captured in the online map photos. Ray isn’t convinced that the photo isn’t a hoax but rather than deal with the explosion of emotions from his unstable brother, he reluctantly grants the request to go check out the street and building of the online photo murder.

Trust Your Eyes quickly explodes into pockets and intricacies from this point forward, culminating in multiple murders, captures, twists and turns. As Linwood Barclay introduces more rabbit trails and characters, motives for murder, and a corrupt political candidate, you begin to be engulfed by the who’s and what’s and he continues to surprise you with each line and chapter. 

Obviously I enjoyed this book immensely, and I would overall recommend it to someone who needs a good quick read, despite being just short of 500 pages. Barclay had me guessing at the multiple mysteries popping up and almost every time I was wrong! It was my first time reading a Barclay novel and I would happily pick up some of his others.

If you’re interested in reading Trust Your Eyes, email me. I’ll happily send my book along to you free of charge. And if you want it sooner, it will be available in bookstores starting today. 

To read other opinions and reviews of this book, click on over to Blogher!

This is a paid review for the Blogher Book Club but I ensure you the opinions expressed above are completely my own. I would tell you if I didn’t think a book was worth the read. Trust me.

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