Now, Barclay returns with a thrilling story in which two brothers suddenly find themselves pulled into a frightening vortex of power and murder…
Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360.com, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address, as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen.
Then he sees something that anyone else might have stumbled upon—but has not—in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered.
Thomas’s brother, Ray, takes care of him, cooking for him, dealing with the outside world on his behalf, and listening to his intricate and increasingly paranoid theories. When Thomas tells Ray what he has seen, Ray humors him with a half-hearted investigation. But Ray soon realizes he and his brother have stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy.
And now they are in the crosshairs…
Now, Barclay returns with a thrilling story in which two brothers suddenly find themselves pulled into a frightening vortex of power and murder…
Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360.com, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address, as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen.
Then he sees something that anyone else might have stumbled upon—but has not—in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered.
Thomas’s brother, Ray, takes care of him, cooking for him, dealing with the outside world on his behalf, and listening to his intricate and increasingly paranoid theories. When Thomas tells Ray what he has seen, Ray humors him with a half-hearted investigation. But Ray soon realizes he and his brother have stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy.
And now they are in the crosshairs…
Reviews-
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Starred review from July 23, 2012
In this tantalizing stand-alone from Canadian author Barclay (The Accident), the death of 62-year-old Adam Kilbride in a tractor accident brings his illustrator son, Ray, home to Promise Falls, N.Y., for the funeral. Ray dreads what lies ahead—primarily figuring out what to do about his schizophrenic younger brother, Thomas. A map-obsessed savant, Thomas spends most of his waking hours on the Whirl360 site memorizing photographed layouts of cities around the world so that he’ll be able to replicate them for the CIA in the event of some future computer-crippling catastrophe. When Thomas witnesses what he thinks is a murder online in the Whirl360 images of a street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he insists that Ray investigate. Before they know it, the brothers hit the radar of a ruthless, politically connected ex-cop and his ice pick–wielding henchwoman, who are themselves scrambling to mop up after a high-stakes screwup, and the Kilbrides find themselves in the fight of their lives. The genius of Barclay’s intricately convoluted design becomes increasingly apparent, with throwaway elements later becoming significant and initially discrete story lines eventually linking with diabolic inevitability. While some of the violence escalates cartoonishly, the engaging main characters grab your heart even as the plot makes it stop. Agent: Helen Heller. -
August 15, 2012
Rear Window crossed with Rain Man and updated for the virtual age, Barclay's latest nail-biter has a map-obsessed schizophrenic discovering a murder while browsing street images online. He and his brother are targeted by the people behind the murder, who work for the New York attorney general and his gubernatorial campaign. Thomas Kilbride spends most of his time in his bedroom in upstate New York, walking the streets of the world via Whirl360, a program akin to Google's Street View. He says he works for the CIA, absorbing cartographic details for the day when a cyberterrorist attack wipes out all maps, and regularly confers with Bill Clinton. His older brother, Ray, a successful political cartoonist who has returned home from Vermont for their father's funeral, rejects Thomas' fictions, sometimes harshly. But after Thomas shows him the chilling image of a woman with a bag pulled over her head in a New York City apartment window and Ray investigates the scene in person, there's no dismissing the possibility of murder. One death leads to another, the brothers become targets, and a crucial mistake by the female hired killer, a one-time Olympic gymnast who now scores with an ice pick, puts her life at risk. Though a few of the plot turns squeak, Barclay is a master of the understated surprise. And though the climax of the book loses some of its heat to its humor--and a secondary plot involving the accidental death of the father and a childhood incident involving Thomas--the payoff is still plenty satisfying. Thomas is one of Barclay's best and most sympathetic characters yet. The scene in which he finds himself walking actual streets for the first time, exposed to their smells and sounds, is memorable. The Toronto-based Barclay (The Accident, 2011, etc.) delivers another page turner that contains as much pleasure in the setup as the outcome.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from August 1, 2012
His father's death left Ray Kilbride in the role of caretaker for his younger brother, Thomas, but Ray never imagined the enormity of his responsibilities. Thomas, a high-functioning schizophrenic, is completely dependent on Ray and prefers to spend his time holed up in his room preparing for secret missions by studying the street views of a map website and memorizing the details of the scenes captured there. When Thomas notices a woman in a window of a building he's examining, apparently being murdered as the photo was taken, what he and Ray choose to do about it will land them in the middle of a mystery and unwittingly set off a chain reaction that could ultimately cost them their lives. VERDICT A resounding hit, Barclay's (Fear the Worst) latest thriller is at once exhilaratingly fast paced and intriguing. The author is a master of plot development and has the ability to captivate readers with the complexity of the family dynamics between Thomas and Ray and excite them with each layer of mystery he uncovers. Fans of the genre will be entertained down to the last sentence and new fans will be compelled to check out Barclay's earlier books after they finish this thrill ride.--Natasha Grant, New York
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from September 1, 2012
Following his father's death in a tractor accident, successful magazine illustrator Ray Kilbride returns to his hometown in upstate New York to settle his father's affairs and to figure out how to care for Thomas, his schizophrenic younger brother. Thomas sits in his bedroom obsessively studying online street maps of every city in the world. He says he's memorizing the maps for the CIA, for that terrible day when some catastrophe wipes maps off the Internet. Additionally, Thomas believes he's in phone contact with former President Bill Clinton. But Thomas is deeply agitated. He has seen what appears to be a murder in progress. He shows Ray a screenshot and demands that Ray go to Manhattan to check it out. Ray's clumsy investigative efforts expose a conspiracy that eventually puts the brothers in mortal danger. Barclay's latest stand-alone thriller (following The Accident, 2011) should vault him into the top rank of thriller writers. The plot is sinuous and propulsive, with feints worthy of an NBA point guard. The danger Ray and Thomas face from a luckless-but-lethal female assassin will keep thriller lovers up late. There's even small-town perfidy relating to the father's death and a secret Thomas has been keeping for 20 years. Best of all, though, is the complex and nuanced portrait of Thomas himself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
