Linwood Barclay's second thriller in his Promise Falls trilogy, after Broken Promise, is the enthralling Far from True. The story opens with an explosion at the drive-in movie theater in the small town of Promise Falls, N.Y. The movie screen falls, killing four people. Lucy, the daughter of one victim, is shocked to find an intruder in her father's house mere hours after his death. The intruder flees quickly, and so Lucy calls Cal Weaver, a private investigator, to examine the house. Cal soon discovers a hidden room full of sex toys and a bunch of empty DVD cases. Assuming that the intruder broke in to remove the presumably salacious DVDs, Cal starts trying to find out more about the dead man.
Meanwhile, Detective Barry Duckworth is simultaneously attempting to investigate the explosion at the drive-in while looking into two unsolved murders that he thinks might be linked.
A large cast of secondary characters and subplots build together with intensity throughout Far from True. Cal and Detective Duckworth's parallel investigations are both interesting and, given the cliffhanger nature of the novel's ending, it seems likely that these seemingly separate cases are going to intersect in the trilogy's final installment.
Barclay's writing is skillful, and his plotting swift, keeping the many different stories unspooling at a rapid rate. Far from True can be read as a standalone, although fans of fast-paced thrillers are sure to enjoy the whole Promise Falls trilogy. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm