Not a Word by Linwood Barclay

In the latest chilling thriller from Linwood Barclay, a man’s world is upended after he stumbles upon a grisly crime scene in the family home.

Every family has secrets, but when Reece visits his parents’ house, he’s shocked to find them in bed, dead. At first glance it looks like a murder-suicide perpetrated by his father, but on closer inspection there’s clearly more to the story. For starters, inconsistencies in the crime scene suggest his dad may not have shot himself.

As Reece, shaken by his horrifying discovery, awaits questioning from the police, his phone lights up with a call. It’s the last person he ever would have expected to hear from.

Reeling from the day’s events, Reece finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew about his parents—and whether he and his own family are in danger now. While the authorities work to untangle the baffling crime scene, Reece is pulled into a web of secrets linked to the unscrupulous pharma company his father worked for years ago.

In order to protect the people he loves most, he’ll have to dig deep into his own past to understand who his parents were, what they did, and who they hurt—before he ends up paying for their sins.

Kobo Edition, 318 pages

Published August 25, 2026

 by William Morrow

3.25/5 stars

Linwood Barclay is one of my go-to authors. My past reads with him have been enjoyable, twisty and full of suspense. It only stands to reason that I was looking forward to this his latest.

Reece Chartwell walked into his parents’ house and finds a scene that shatters everything he thought he knew about his family. As he tries to make sense of what happened, the story slips back in time that showed me his parents’ marriage, which it turns out the couple he grew up with had far more going on than he ever imagined.

Unfortunately, this one just didn’t click for me the way his other books have. Something was missing. I don’t need to like the characters in a thriller. Sometimes the ones I can’t stand are the most fun to read about. But I do need to feel something for them, one way or the other, and here I never did. Without that connection it was hard to care quite as much about what happened to them and that took some of the punch out of the twists. 

It’s still a Barclay book, with the secrets, twists and surprises his fans expect, other readers may connect with it more than I did. For me, though, it wasn’t one of his best.

My copy obtained through local library via CloudLibrary.