Timothy Blake couldn't be more ordinary. Tim is a car
salesman with a half-crazy girlfriend he has no real
emotional ties to, an ex-wife who's picked up the pieces of
her life and moved on and a teenage daughter who spends her
summers with Tim, but like all teenagers, has a life of her
own. Tim's daughter works as a desk clerk at a hotel just
down the road. Life is uneventful, but he has no
complaints; he just kind of "goes with the flow."
Then comes the night daughter Sydney doesn't return from
work. And she doesn't come home the next day either.
Panicked, Tim goes to the hotel to see if her coworkers
have any idea where she might be. No one there knows
Sydney. They don't even recognize her picture. Every
parent's worst fear has become Tim's waking nightmare. As
Tim, his ex and Syd's friends pound the pavement looking
for clues, they are unaware they are being watched. Not one
member of the group is a former Navy SEAL or CIA; no one
has martial arts training or any black ops training...they're
all so normal. And yet they move ahead, slowly but surely,
following the almost invisible footprints of a young woman
none of knew quite as well as they would have liked to.
Tim's disappointments became my own as I agonized with Tim
and his ex over the search for their daughter in this real
nail-biter. Linwood Barclay has a knack for tapping
into our deepest fears and exploiting them for all they're
worth. FEAR THE WORST is no exception. This intense page-
turner had me on pins needles from beginning to end.
Your daughter doesn’t come home one night from her summer
job. You go there looking for her. No one’s seen here.
But it’s worse than that. No one’s ever seen
her. So where has she been going every day? And where is
she now?
In Linwood Barclay’s riveting new
thriller, an ordinary man’s desperate search for his
daughter leads him into a dark world of corruption,
exploitation, and murder. Tim Blake is about to learn that
the people you think you know best are the ones harboring
the biggest secrets.
Tim is an average guy.
He sells cars. He has an ex-wife. She’s moved in with a
man whose moody son spends more time online than he
should. His girlfriend is turning out to be a bit of a
flake. It’s not a life without hassles, but nothing will
prepare Tim for the nightmare that’s about to
begin.
Sydney vanishes into thin air. At the hotel
where she supposedly worked, no one has ever heard of her.
Even her closest friends seem to be at a loss. Now, as the
days pass without word, Tim must face the fact that not
only is Sydney missing, but that the daughter he’s loved
and thought he knew is a virtual stranger.
As he
retraces Sydney’s steps, Tim discovers that the suburban
Connecticut town he always thought of as idyllic is
anything but. What he doesn’t know is that his every move
is being watched. There are others who want to find Syd as
much as Tim does.
But they’re not planning a
Welcome Home party.
The closer Tim comes to the
truth, the closer he comes to every parent’s worst
nightmare—and the kind of evil only a parent’s love has a
chance in hell of stopping.