Take Your Breath Away is the most recent book release by best-selling author Linwood Barclay.
***** Possible Spoilers *****
After reading Take Your Breath Away I felt inspired to write a book review for The Inscriber. As for Barclay I give this one a 4/5. I enjoyed the premise, a wife goes missing after having an exterminator come through to check for mice. The husband is seemingly the only suspect. He enjoyed flipping houses, his wife at this point wanted more stability. Both made mistakes, yet were apparently trying to mend their relationship.
So what happened to her?
With no evidence to arrest there were no arrest made in the wife’s disappearance. Six years later though she supposedly reappeared. Finding herself back at her last known address, creating a scene since the house had been sold, torn down, and obviously a new house was built.
A neighbor then calls the husband explaining the situation. He speaks to the new owner of the house and gets a copy of the recording of the incident. The detective on the case also gets called regarding the situation. Even after the years went back, she still believed it was the husband who was responsible for his wife’s disappearance.
She was not the only one, his sister-in-law believed he was guilty as well. His mother-in-law was a former reporter, so she wanted more concrete evidence that he was responsible. At this point though she was dying of cancer and in the hospital.
As Take Your Breath Away progressed sightings of the missing wife began to emerge. A phone call then got made to the one who was responsible for kidnapping her from the home. I will not give away who it was, yet it was who I thought was responsible for her disappearance. She did wind up at the hospital of her mother to let her know she was alive, so there was closure for her mother, so she was able to die with peace of mind.
Yet for me the reason why the book gets a four and not a five, is that the ending was not close to being realistic. It also portrays the detective as being truly incompetent and short-sighted when it came to her own investigation.
Still it is definitely worth reading.