As with most expertly crafted thrillers, it’s only after finishing Linwood Barclay’s latest novel that the real fun begins. In the thick of reading, there’s an uncontrollable need to keep turning pages, to keep up with the plot twists Barclay drops at both expected and unexpected intervals, and to enjoy the heady rollercoaster effect produced by the story’s unbridled momentum.

Taking a step back, the architecture of Barclay’s story comes into focus and can be properly appreciated. Take, for example, the book’s opening, which finds newspaper reporter David Harwood, his wife Jan, and son Ethan enjoying a much-needed day trip together at a theme park just outside the central New York town of Promise Falls. For an instant it appears Barclay will follow the standard trope of having Ethan disappear. Which he does. But then the pattern shifts, and it’s Jan who ends up lost. The search for the missing woman turns up all manner of nasty surprises.

Like other Barclay protagonists, Harwood teeters on the edge of unlikability. His relentless pursuit of a corrupt politician and his anger at discovering secrets Jan kept about her background and her motives for marrying and having a child ensure that his edges remain rough. But Harwood’s anger can’t disguise his deep love for Ethan, or his primal desire to protect the boy. Unlike Barclay’s previous domestic thrillers, the bad guys here don’t quite rise to the same level of believability as the good (albeit deeply flawed) ones, though they do, in the case of one very psychopathic one-armed man, embody a macabre sense of the absurd.

Woe be to those who dismiss Barclay as a writer who’s found a formula and sticks with it. Such a thing shouldn’t be dismissed, it should be admired. Finding a viable niche is a prospect most writers – especially those who want to make thrillers their métier – never achieve.