{"id":6504,"date":"2018-06-27T13:13:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T17:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=6504"},"modified":"2019-03-11T08:59:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T12:59:55","slug":"no-safe-house-by-linwood-barclay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/27\/no-safe-house-by-linwood-barclay\/","title":{"rendered":"“No Safe House” by Linwood Barclay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2014 Barclay Perspectives, Inc. Published by Penguin Random House.<\/a><\/p>\n

I will give Barclay credit for coming up with a plot that I have never encountered before. A small-time gangster goes into the “private banking” business, taking in cash and other valuables from people who don’t want them where the authorities might find them should their properties be searched.\u00a0 He takes a percentage off the top and he hides the booty where no one would think to look: in the attics of unsuspecting neighbors. But his scheme encounters a problem when one of his stashes is stolen – obviously an inside job – and, in the course of the robbery, the son of one of his henchmen – who is there on a totally unrelated criminal purpose (taking a hot car for a joy ride) – is killed by the robber.\u00a0 Accompanying the would-be joy rider is the underage daughter of a high school teacher.<\/p>\n

Things rapidly spiral out of control, for the gangster, his henchmen, the people supporting the private banking enterprise and especially the teacher and his family.\u00a0 The body count reaches 6, plus three earlier deaths that are eventually linked.\u00a0 The second biggest question is: how is the teacher going to get out of this mess?<\/p>\n

But the biggest question is: why the hell would a gangster store booty in the attics of unsuspecting people?\u00a0 Why not just bury it in the woods, with the GPS locations carefully noted?\u00a0 It would have been simpler and safer (fewer people aware of the criminal activities, much less chance of being caught in the houses).\u00a0 At one point in the book the gangster admits that it was all a pretty dumb idea.<\/p>\n

Barclay ties up everything nicely. Perhaps too nicely, with too many coincidences.\u00a0 I think he is a decent writer but I had a very hard time keeping with the story, maybe because the whole idea was so ridiculous.\u00a0 But I slogged through and the final 100 pages went pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

If you don’t mind a head-scratching plot, the rest of the book was okay.<\/p>\n

5 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2014 Barclay Perspectives, Inc. Published by Penguin Random House. I will give Barclay credit for coming up with a plot that I have never encountered before. A small-time gangster goes into the “private banking” business, taking in cash and other valuables from people who don’t want them where the authorities might find them should … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-1GU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6504"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7599,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504\/revisions\/7599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}