Follow Cal Weaver as he solves mysteries in a small town. He was stopped at a red light when he got a tap on his car window from a teenage girl asking for a ride. Then things started to go very wrong...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this mystery thriller. As the story unfolded, there were many, many twists and turns. Linwood time after time led you up the garden path only to suddenly change direction yet again. He skillfully built his plot at an entertaining and refreshing pace, with a back story that was not laboured. The amount of detail in the plot was tremendous and this was a joy to read. I wondered how Linwood had written his novel and I imagined a spreadsheet of details that he had to paste into the growing text.
A Tap on the Window is a first person narrative but with a twist. Every now and then, there is a short chapter written in italics - which is not Cal Weaver but someone else integral to the story. Slowly the identity of the italic chapters is revealed. This is very clever and adds even more enjoyment to this great novel.
Aside from this mystery, that ticks all the boxes, there is also a discussion of local politics and the role of the police with their treatment of teenagers and visitors to this small town. Solving mysteries is different nowadays with the exponential uptake of Facebook, which Linwood weaves into his tale...
These days, all I had to do was go to the number one social network. There wasn't, in my experience, a kid today who wasn't on it, although I suspected it wouldn't be long before the younger generation found some other way to connect. All their parents were on Facebook now, ruining it for them, crowding them out, posting videos and pictures of dogs and cats and cute babies, and tarting up cliched aphorisms--"This Is Your Life. Be Who You Want To Be!"--in coloured boxes with fancy fonts.
... So true, Lindon! But Lindon does not stop there, he also has a rant about the dash cam...
My car had a dash cam--a camera mounted in the front windshield that caught the whole thing. Just in the right side of the frame. I should have known better. I didn't think my car was at the right angle to capture the scene. My chief brought me into his office and we watched the video together. Several times. No pop-corn.
... So there you have it, a great mystery complete with a reflection of how modern technology has changed our daily lives. I consider this a top quality read and think that Linwood is tops in the mystery thriller genre. What more can I say? This is simply a 5 star read for me. A great quote is featured on the inside cover from the Evening Telegraph. "More wriggles and twists than a bag full of snakes" - I could not put it better myself.
A Tap on the Window has 484 pages and was written in 2013.
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