It’s been awhile since I read a good mystery. It’s not typically the type of book I’d pick up a in book store so when an advanced copy of Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay showed up on my doorstep my husband laughed and said, “are you really going to read that?”
While I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself I sure am glad the BlogHer book club chose it for me. Trust Your Eyes is a story of two brothers who live together after the unexpected and unfortunate death of their father. The younger brother is schizophrenic and almost never steps outside of the house. At a young age he became obsessed with maps. He memorized every place he ever read about and can name intricate details about the streets and stores in cities he’s never even visited.
The invention of a new game called Whirl360 (similar to the street view on Google Maps) brings the younger brother’s love of maps directly to his computer and he spends all but an hour or two a day stepping through the streets of cities memorizing the places and landmarks within them.
During his online tour of New York City the schizophrenic brother stumbles upon an image he believes to be a murder. When he tells his brother about it the two of them quickly become wrapped up in investigating the mystery and the reader takes the journey alongside them as the details unravel throughout the pages.
I liked the way Barclay wrote this mystery around a modern day computer game. If you are familiar with Google Maps you will find the story quite interesting. Google does take snapshots of cities and towns and it is possible that one of their cameras could capture a crime in the making.
Note: This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.