Suspense, Mystery, Horror and Thriller Fiction - Suspense Magazine

optioned.
Linwood Barclay has landed at the top of bestseller lists around the world, making Barclay a #1 bestselling author
in countries like the UK and Canada. This fall, with the publication of his latest novel “Trust Your Eyes,” fans will get a new
taste of Barclay’s talent.
If you have yet to read one of Linwood Barclay’s sharp and gripping thrillers, try “Trust Your Eyes.”
In “Trust Your Eyes,” Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic who rarely leaves his bedroom. But with a
computer program called Whirl360.com (much like Google Street View), he travels the world from his room, memorizing
the streets around the globe in anticipation of a terrorist virus he’s convinced will bring technology to a halt.
Thomas’ brother Ray, a political cartoonist who has returned home to care for him after their father’s accidental death,
takes his brother’s paranoid theories with a grain of salt. Until Thomas shows Ray an image from Whirl360—an image from
a New York City apartment window that looks like a woman being murdered. Skeptical at first, Ray soon realizes he and his
brother have stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy with powerful people at its helm—people who will do anything to keep from
being exposed. As the mystery deepens and the body count rises, the brothers find themselves in the crosshairs.
Linwood studied English Literature at Trent University. He was fortunate to have some very fine mentors; in particular,
the celebrated Canadian author Margaret Laurence, whom Linwood first met while she was serving as writer-in-residence
at Trent, and Kenneth Millar, who under the name Ross Macdonald, wrote the acclaimed series of mystery novels featuring
the private eye Lew Archer.
It was at Trent where he met his wife Neetha. They have been married more than thirty years, and have two children,
Spencer and Paige.
Suspense Magazine (S. MAG.): Losing your father at such a young age must have made you grow up pretty quickly.
Linwood Barclay (LB): It was the event that most defined who I am. It wasn’t just that I lost my father, with whom I was very
close, but I effectively, at the age of sixteen, was running the family business. I was taking care of my mother and brother. A
mountain of responsibility was dropped on me. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. But at the time, it was simply what you
had to do. As a result, I never had those kinds of wild, late teenage years. I was too busy.
S. MAG.: What prompted you to decide to become a full-time author?
LB: I actually wanted to be one right from the start. I had dreams of being a novelist in my early twenties. I had written a couple
by the time I was twenty-two or so. The only problem was, no one wanted to publish them, and we can all be grateful for that.
They just weren’t good enough. So, at twenty-two, I went to work for a newspaper. I figured, why not get a job where you get paid
to write every single day, even if it’s not always about things that particularly interest you. (I wrote
a lot about a cow disease called brucellosis. I wrote so much about it, I was almost certain I
had the disease. The chief symptom was an inability to produce milk).
I started writing three columns a week for the Toronto
Star in 1993, and that eventually led me back into writing
novels. The first came out in 2004. When the books started
doing well enough that I could quit the newspaper, I did.
So I was back to where I wanted to be when I was twentytwo.
S. MAG.: In “Trust Your Eyes,” Thomas Kilbride is a mapobsessed
schizophrenic. Where did he come from?
LB: He’s very much a product of my imagination. I don’t
know anyone with that particular obsession, but I’ve spent a
lot of time on the Internet virtually wandering cities, and was
able to imagine what it might be like to be too consumed by it.
But someone close to me does have schizophrenia, and I think
my experiences in this regard helped me in creating some of
Thomas’ idiosyncrasies.
64 Suspense Magazine September 2012 / Vol. 038