Bestselling Canadian author Linwood Barclay often writes about contemporary issues, exploring the things that trouble us through crime fiction. For example, in Look Both Ways he concocted a plot about self-driving cars, and in Find You First we meet a tech billionaire who has everything except the feeling that his life is worthwhile. I Will Ruin you plucks a whole range of topics from the headlines, such as violent incidents in schools, sexual abuse of minors, drug addiction and the recent increase in attempts to censor certain books. How does he pull these seemingly unrelated topics into a taut thriller?
The book opens with Richard Boyle, a Connecticut teacher, having a discussion with his students about The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. Through the classroom windows, Richard observes a man approaching the school. The man is wearing a vest fitted with dynamite. Richard immediately goes into emergency mode and instructs a student to call 911. After ensuring his students are safe and that they will block the door with heavy desks, he leaves the classroom. Richard runs through the halls alerting other teachers to lockdown. He heads to the school entrance located in the direction that the man was walking. He is literally running towards danger.
It’s worth remembering that Connecticut is where the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting took place. Perhaps this is why Linwood Barclay chose the Connecticut town of Milford as his setting. It certainly lends credibility to his story.
When he reaches the doors, Richard recognises the assailant as Mark LeDrew, a former student. Mark has a list of staff members he wants to meet and it seems obvious that he intends to kill them in a suicide bombing. Fortunately, Richard convinces Mark that violence is not the answer and they go outside and wait until bomb professionals can arrive to disarm the bomb. But, just as he leaves the building, Mark trips on a shoelace which detonates the bomb, killing him and wounding Richard.
Richard becomes a hero in the press. Not everyone has the skills to defuse a situation that could have ended with mass casualties, and yet Mark’s parents intend to sue him for their son’s death. At the same time, other parents are unhappy that Richard has been teaching their children about The Road. All the media discussion of the bombing catches the attention of an angry individual in need of money and in the midst of the turmoil Richard is approached by a blackmailer.
The story unfolds from multiple points of view – including those of Richard, his wife Bonnie and his sister-in-law, Detective Marta Harper. There is also a cast of secondary characters who have chapters presented from their points of view. With the multiple plot lines, it is necessary to have the different perspectives to ensure that it is easy to follow the story as it progresses. The complexity of the interwoven plot lines and characters would be a challenge for an inexperienced writer.
I Will Ruin You is a very fast paced read. Similar to other thriller writers like Kellye Garrett, Barclay likes to end each chapter with a hook or an event that leaves you wanting more. It makes for an action-packed story that will keep you reading late into the night to find out what happens next.
At one point, when Richard is meeting with the parents who feel that The Road is not an appropriate book for teenagers, he tells them that good fiction provokes and bridges gaps and can bring people together by exposing them to the different sides of an issue. This could be a description of the book banning plot line in I Will Ruin You. Richard’s approach to addressing the parents’ concerns about the books studied in class is powerful. Equally powerful is reading about their desire to protect children from violent stories at a traumatic time, with mass killings occurring in their state and across America.
If you value the freedom to read broadly, the storyline around the book banning will likely hit home. Does Barclay manage to pull all the other storylines and character perspectives together? Of course he does. All the angles he puts across will keep you guessing, and his books never fail to entertain.
For more Canadian crime fiction, see Shari Lapena, Robyn Harding and Sam Wiebe.
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£11.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars