Broken Promise

LoveReading Says

Linwood Barclay is ace at dreaming up disturbing scenarios and then letting them play out in increasingly creepy ways. This time, the author of No Time for Goodbye (a huge seller in 2008) gives us David Harwood, a newspaper reporter who's out of a job, and living back with his parents and his son Ethan in his hometown of Promise Falls.

In typical Barclay style, the author lets us know from the off that things are about to go horribly wrong: "A couple of hours before all hell broke loose, I was in bed, awake since five, pondering the circumstances that had returned me, at the age of forty-one, to my childhood home." When he visits his cousin Marla, who is still grieving the death of her baby, he finds her taking care of a little boy the same age her own son would have been, and claiming she was given him by an "angel".

But there's blood by her front door, and when David tracks down the baby's real home, he finds the body of a woman. The first in a new series to be set in Promise Falls, Broken Promise is fast-paced and fun, ramping up to a thoroughly unsettling, clever conclusion. 

Books in The Promise Falls Trilogy:
1. Broken Promise
2. Far from True
3. The Twenty-Three

Serial Reader? Check out our 'Fall in Love With a Book Series' collection to find amazing book series to dive in to.

Reviewed by Alison Flood
I was that child who used to read under the table during dinner and in the corners at family gatherings.
More reviews by Alison Flood

About Broken Promise

David Harwood is asked to look in on his cousin Marla, still traumatised after losing her baby, and he considers it a temporary relief from his dead-end life. But when he arrives, he's disturbed to find blood on Marla's front door. He's even more disturbed to find Marla nursing a baby, that she claims was delivered to her 'by an angel'.

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