Tim Weaver

David Raker Missing Persons Investigator is hoping to help an ex London Met detective Colm Healy find redemption and solve a case that has haunted him for 4 years and ruined his life, his work, and his marriage. That is the basis of this brilliant 500+ page thriller/mystery by up and coming author Tim Weaver and makes for complex yet very rewarding reading. The author had my attention from page one and held me spellbound for just over 2 days with many intelligent twists and changes in the show more storyline all adding to the tension and concluding in magnificient fashion. I particularly loved the London setting with the imagery and use of old wooden piers and the thrill and sound of victorian amusement arcades. Mr Weaver as an author writes with a great confidence and turns a complex plot into a thrilling ride, I look forward to David Raker's next outing.... show less

This was a book of two halves for me - the set up (when a patient's bandages are removed in recovery, he turns out to be the man who should be in the next room, and the expected patient has vanished) was fantastic, but too much of the book wasn't about that at all. Instead it was an extension of the original 'downfall of Healy' plot (a book I haven't actually read as it sounded too traumatic for me). After a point, so many characters were acting under duress it all got a bit ridiculous. show more Cliffhanger ending too. show less

There is something about Tim Weaver's David Raker novels that keeps me glued to the story, fully engaged -- though also occasionally frustrated. The way Weaver writes his stories, we follow along with the journalist-turned-missing-person-finder David Raker as he tries to piece together what is going on. I love that about these books; the reader really has no clue and is learning as the main character does. There are a bit too many circumstances, in this book especially, when the criminals show more spend too much time talking; in reality, Raker should have been dead about 10 times over by the end of the book... but, of course, he survives because the criminals blather on too much (continuing to help us unravel the mystery, of course). Weaver's later Raker books are better, but I still very much enjoyed this one. show less

Rebekah Murphy finds herself stranded on a seasonal holiday island off the New York coast after a failed attempt to murder her. Not only is she alone on the island with no communications to the mainland, but she does not know who wants her dead, or why. She does know that when the island reopens in the spring, her killers will be back.

The story of how Rebekah survives on the island for five long winter months is interwoven with her life before and the events leading up to her visiting such a show more remote place. The sections dealing with her island isolation are terrific. We get a sense of her terror, her resolve to survive, her growing strength as she learns to adapt to her situation and her paranoia as she dwells on who could have wanted her dead and why. She, and we, struggle to understand why no one has come looking for her. Has her estranged husband conspired with her best friend to eliminate her and start a new life together?

The first three quarters of this book are excellent. We get excitement, action, plenty of suspects and twisty turns plotting. By mainly seeing things through Rebekah’s eyes we are hooked into her conspiracy weaving and flights of fancy. The view glimpses into other events and characters are vague enough to leave us wondering, like Rebekah, where this is all leading.

The last quarter of the book, as the island opens up again, is a disappointment. The driver behind all that happens to Rebekah is a rather mundane cover up of another, admittedly horrific, set of crimes completely unrelated to anything that Rebekah was considering. The perpetrator actions seem over elaborate and the key change of heart by the ‘mastermind’ seems false. show less