Title: No One Home
Author: Tim Weaver
Series: David Raker #10
Publisher: Michael Joseph
[Synopsis]
On Halloween night, four households gather for a party in the tiny Yorkshire village of Black Gale. Three hours in, they head outside, onto the darkened moors, to play a drunken game of hide and seek. None of them return. There’s no trail, no evidence and no answers. An entire village has just vanished.
With the police investigation dead in the water, the families of the disappeared ask missing persons investigator David Raker to find out what happened. But nothing can prepare him for the truth.
[My Review]
The David Raker series has been recommended to me so many times, so I decided to give it a go with this new release – number 10 – whilst wondering if I’d feel like I was missing crucial details by coming new to the series at this late point. It turns out that, although I’m sure there were details I didn’t pick up on from not having read the previous 9 novels, they’re not essential to enjoy this brilliantly crafted, complex and intriguing novel.
No One Home has a real, persistent sense of threat throughout; I constantly felt a sense of eeriness as I turned the pages, and the novel’s plot – four households, which make up a tiny but whole village called Black Gale, disappear one night and David Raker is sent to investigate – is in itself a pretty strange and intriguing concept. Although this is a long book at over 500 pages, it doesn’t feel slow or overly long; I think this is in part because the plot is so layered and twisty, with surprises along the way and characters who are realistic and convincing.
I really liked Jo Kader, who we meet in a seperate narrative which is set in the 80’s, as a cop investigating a different case in a very male-dominated police force. She seems strong, intelligent and opinionated and comes across really well. Obviously David Raker takes pride of place in this story as the main protagonist, who is looking into the disappearance of the Black Gale households in the present day and seems to be a brilliant missing person investigator, but Jo’s character does a great job of holding my attention too.
The story moved at just the right pace to allow the reader to keep up with the various names, relationships, and plot developments, and although it was complex and very entertaining, it didn’t feel overly far-fetched. No One Home also leaves the reader with a very impactful ending that immediately made me want to read the next book – and, until that’s released, I now want to start right from the beginning of this brilliant series.
[Rating: 5/5]
Many thanks to Michael Joseph for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.
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