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A review by kandicez
A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay
3.0
I'm reading this with a group. It's somehow always more fun to read with others, especially when it's a mystery/who dunnit, like this one. You can bounce theories off the other readers, and if you end up being right, it is so much more satisfying because someone else knows you figured it out. This was a little different in that I think we all figured it out. Early!
Barclay sets up the unreliable narrator trope very nicely with a tragic incident in the prologue. He whets the appetite for what's to come by ramping up the tension in those few pages, but also introducing the main character in a way that allows us to sympathize and trust, yet not necessarily rely upon.
What follows is almost a text book example of the who dunnit formula, complete with red herrings. Red herrings that the read inevitably will eat with their theories!
Barclay uses the first third of the book to plant the seeds for three possible bad guys. THREE! He then shows us how and why what happened happened. Yes, that was a confusing sentence, but no less so than the convoluted plot spaghetti we get in the final third of this book. I enjoyed it, but despite seeming cleverness, I had figured it out very early, was convinced I was wrong in the middle and then convinced I was actually right in the end.
I know that sounds like a five star read, but I was disappointed. Yes! I want the satisfaction of figuring it out, but I want to feel clever for having done so, not tricked.
I freely admit that the narrator may have added to my disappointment. Reading another book I might have found his voice soothing, but that was my problem here. This was not a soothing read. It was supposed to be a thriller, and the tone in which it was delivered belied that and left me rewinding often to see if I had missed something. I hadn't. There simply wasn't enough change in tone to indicate that "ah ha!" I was hearing. He also voiced women in that mocking, almost falsetto way that grates on my nerves.
I enjoyed it, but think I might have enjoyed it more on the page, and that's not really Barclay's fault.
Barclay sets up the unreliable narrator trope very nicely with a tragic incident in the prologue. He whets the appetite for what's to come by ramping up the tension in those few pages, but also introducing the main character in a way that allows us to sympathize and trust, yet not necessarily rely upon.
What follows is almost a text book example of the who dunnit formula, complete with red herrings. Red herrings that the read inevitably will eat with their theories!
Barclay uses the first third of the book to plant the seeds for three possible bad guys. THREE! He then shows us how and why what happened happened. Yes, that was a confusing sentence, but no less so than the convoluted plot spaghetti we get in the final third of this book. I enjoyed it, but despite seeming cleverness, I had figured it out very early, was convinced I was wrong in the middle and then convinced I was actually right in the end.
I know that sounds like a five star read, but I was disappointed. Yes! I want the satisfaction of figuring it out, but I want to feel clever for having done so, not tricked.
I freely admit that the narrator may have added to my disappointment. Reading another book I might have found his voice soothing, but that was my problem here. This was not a soothing read. It was supposed to be a thriller, and the tone in which it was delivered belied that and left me rewinding often to see if I had missed something. I hadn't. There simply wasn't enough change in tone to indicate that "ah ha!" I was hearing. He also voiced women in that mocking, almost falsetto way that grates on my nerves.
I enjoyed it, but think I might have enjoyed it more on the page, and that's not really Barclay's fault.