Trust Your Eyes

Finished August 24
Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay

I think one reason Linwood Barclay's books are so successful is that his characters are ordinary people, people like you and me. The things that happen to them, while threatening and sometimes fatal, are things that could happen to anyone. It's all a matter of coincidence, timing, and circumstances. His characters are just going about their daily life, when something they do intersects with something that someone dangerous is doing. And things move quickly from there.
Here, we have Ray, an illustrator, who has come back to his hometown after the accidental death of his father. He must plan for his brother Thomas' future and wrap up his father's estate. Thomas is intelligent, but not able to function independently, and he has an obsession with maps. Thomas has covered the walls of his rooms with maps and spends all his time on his computer on a program called Whirl360, very similar to Google streetview, where he travels the cities of the world, memorizing the streets and what is on them. He has been dependent on his father for everything, and with his father gone, Ray must find an appropriate living arrangement for him.
When Thomas sees something on his virtual travels, he is sure he is witnessing a crime, and tries to convince Ray to follow up on it. When Ray reluctantly does, we reach the moment where the worlds intersect and the two men get drawn into a world for which they are unprepared.
With lots of suspense, and interesting characters, we are brought into a story that is hard to stop reading. Luckily this was my book for a flight, and I managed to almost finish it during that time. With two pages left, I could hardly wait to find a moment to reach the final, satisfying conclusion, one with a nice little twist to it.