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…
About Linwood Barclay
Linwood Barclay, former columnist for the Toronto Star, is the #1 international bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed novels, including The Accident, Never Look Away, and No Time for Goodbye, which has been optioned for film. He lives near Toronto.
Editorial Review
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. – Kirkus Rveiews
The Peeping Savant - ‘Trust Your Eyes,’ by Linwood Barclay, and More
The New York Times Book Review – September 14, 2012 (Excerpt)
Some days, all you really want is for someone to tell you a wicked-good story. Linwood Barclay answers the reader’s perpetual prayer with TRUST YOUR EYES (New American Library, $25.95), an offbeat thriller about a schizophrenic savant who witnesses a murder but is so clearly nuts that no one will take him seriously. In a neat twist on Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” Thomas Kilbride, who has been crazy about maps since he was 6 years old, is obsessively poring over Whirl360, a computer program rather like Google Street View, when he fixates on the image of someone being suffocated while standing at a window in an apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. But because he believes the C.I.A. has assigned him the job of committing to photographic memory all the streets in all the major cities of the world, Thomas has a bit of a credibility problem.
Through sheer persistence (and a few nasty tantrums), Thomas finally makes a convincing case for murder to his older brother, Ray, who has returned to the family home in upstate New York to care for his barely socialized sibling after the sudden death of their widowed father. But Ray’s clumsy efforts to play sleuth only serve to alert some dangerous people that he and Thomas have stumbled on proof of an undetected killing, and before long, the brothers are ensnared in a dizzying sequence of incredible but entertaining plot twists involving crooked lawyers, corrupt politicians, two-bit gangsters and a memorable hit-person named Nicole, a onetime Olympic medalist who does her best work with an ice pick. [Read the full article...]
Book World: ‘Trust Your Eyes,’ by Linwood Barclay
The Washington Post Book Review – September 16, 2012 (Excerpt)
Thomas Kilbride, the young man at the center of Linwood Barclay’s delightful new novel, spends up to 16 hours a day at his computer. Mostly, he’s at the Whirl360 Web site, where he can explore almost every street in most of the world’s cities. He memorizes countless details about many thousands of streets because he believes a calamity — a terrorist attack, an earthquake, even an alien invasion — will destroy all the world’s maps. Then he will save America with his unique ability to tell the CIA how to move its agents from one location to another. Thomas frequently sends e-mails to update the CIA about his plans, and he also thinks he exchanges phone calls with former president Bill Clinton, who serves as his liaison to the agency.
A complication arrives with the death of Thomas’s father, who has been caring for him at his farmhouse in Upstate New York. Thomas’s brother, Ray, a freelance cartoonist, comes to the farm and must decide what to do about his younger brother. Ray thinks Thomas should be in a supervised group home, but Thomas resists any move that might expose his top-secret mission. Then, while exploring a street in Greenwich Village at his computer, Thomas sees a woman’s face at a second-story window and thinks she’s being murdered. Ray takes a look and finds the face ambiguous; he suggests it might be some sort of dummy with a wig. Thomas says that if Ray won’t go investigate, he’ll walk to New York himself. Ray reluctantly makes the trip. [Read the full article...]
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Vampire Valeria Trumaine must confront old demons and face new possibilities as she struggles to bring a rogue vampire to justice. Her best friend and powerful Sidhe princess, Irulan, joins the hunt. Valeria will find that Irulan’s motives for keeping her safe are not what she thinks. And soon she is faced with an undeniable attraction that makes her question everything she knew about herself. [Read More...]
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