THE TWENTY-THREE

By Linwood Barclay

The incredible Promise Falls trilogy comes to an end with this, the final installment. Beginning with disorder and turmoil to the ‘nth’ degree, readers will be absolutely thrilled, yet completely sad to say so long to this 5-Star story.

In upstate New York, Detective Barry Duckworth has his hands full dealing with the many crimes, murders and disasters in his town. Recently, a group of residents living in a complex began to get violently sick. People are passing out, falling into critical condition in one of the worst events ever seen in the history of the town. More and more people are dying, and it seems that someone or something has tainted the town’s water supply.

Because of this, one suspect is the hateful former mayor, Randall Finley, who just so happens to own a water bottling company. However, water doesn’t seem to be the only thing killing people on this Memorial Day weekend. A knife-toting bad guy is actually on the loose targeting women.

People are literally dropping like flies in Promise Falls when a young girl, just eleven years of age, tells Detective Cal Weaver that her mother, who died from the water poisoning, had previously been thought to be the person who had started the whole thing. But…why?

There are many characters in this story, and readers should go back and begin this trilogy at the very beginning so as not to miss the background and backstories of the characters. The most gratifying plotline in the book is the mystery of the number 23, which keeps coming up again and again, and provides the reader with the ultimate payoff to the whole story.

Even though the trilogy is over Barclay is one author who continues to create, and his imagination will continue to keep readers on the edge of their seats for years to come.