Linwood Barclay, A Noise Downstairs

Linwood Barclay can write quite the page-turner, and although he's Canadian, he tends to set his books in nearby (to me) Milford, Connecticut, which is cool. A Noise Downstairs is about Paul Davis, a nice-guy professor at "West Haven College" (a made-up place), whose life gets upended after he tries to help a colleague he sees driving erratically one night. Turns out the colleague was up to no good.

For most of the book, we watch Paul dealing with the consequences of what happened at the side of the road that night—his mental and physical recovery. He's in a fragile state to begin with, then, when he starts hearing strange noises coming from downstairs when he's in bed for the night....

So, this book was definitely an exciting read, but it was also rather strange—structurally, I guess. I can't be more specific without giving away a very big twist. There were actually a couple big twists, the first of which really surprised me, about 70% of the way into the book.

I'm not even sure that it's right to call it a twist, but it was a surprising plot development. Maybe if the book were divided into several parts, with the big breaks in the story's direction thus flagged, I would have found that first revelation more acceptable. At any rate, the book is worth the read. It's just kind of odd.