Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay is a suspense thriller about a man with psychological issues witnessing an murder attempt on a popular map website. Due to his conditions, he gets his brother to investigate the location in the photo and soon after, one event leads to another until they realize that their life may be in jeopardy and that they may be on to something that they shouldn’t have been involved with in the first place. Every since reading the first novel from Linwood Barclay, I knew I would read a lot more from him in the future. This guy just knows how to write thrillers! Here, the book starts off a little slow. I believe the first 40% of the book consists of the main setup. Things then start to roll till about the 65% mark. Once past that, the author just loads everything up in a canon and shoots it right in your face at full speed. I found it very difficult trying to putthe book down towards the later half of the book.

What I like most about the author is that he crafts stories that doesn’t seem too far fetched unlike other mysteries or thrillers. Everything just seems so real and authentic. As I noted in other reviews, the author excels in creating a story by introducing seemingly innocent and your everyday individuals and throwing their life completely upside down in a matter of chapters. In Trust Your Eyes, the main focus is on Ray and Thomas Killbride. Ray is your sane and harmless individual. His brother Thomas however, is not so normal. He never leaves his room and spends almost every minute of his day on the computer studying maps and memorizing every detail and street of every city he’s “visited”. One day, he notices something strange while travelling along a street in New York. It turns out to be an attempted murder and I’m sure you know how the reset goes from there on out. One thing leads to another and soon enough, they discover something that a small group of individuals would very much like to keep a secret.

Honestly, Ray is not that interesting of a character although the story is told through his eyes for the most part. His brother is the one that creates interest in the story because of his unusual condition. The scary part is, in today’s society where so many people are glued to their electronic devices, I’m sure there are a lot of “Thomas’s” out there as well. The other characters in the story were so-so. Julie is your typical girl. Allison is your average selfish girl whose gotten in over head. Nicole is of some interest considering I’ve never really read a story about a killer with her background before. Lewis was a bore. Howard is your typical “I’m not a bad person but I will do what I have to do” type of guy. The funny thing is, while these characters do seem like a bore, surprisingly, the story just kept chugging along and I found myself following right along without any problems.

As I said earlier, I love the author and the books he’s written. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Trust Your Eyes is no exception. His writing flows very nicely from one chapter to the next. Although he doesn’t always leave cliff hangers at the end of chapters, I still felt so compelled to read just one more. That “one more” leads to another and another and not long after, I’m already half way done. One of the biggest disappointment I had with the book is the author reusing the same and tired theme when it came time to present Thomas’s real problem. Somewhere towards the middle of the book or so, the author drops a slight hint for the readers and I was immediately put off mainly because its been done so many times when it comes to troubled individuals in a story. Luckily, not much time was spent on this subject till the end and the author definitely made up for it with that incredible ending!

In the end, I consider Trust Your Eyes a definite read. It’s simple, brilliant and never over the top. It was just a tad bit long and felt the author could have taken some things out. But for what its worth, this is definitely a very good thriller.