Let me begin this review by recommending that those who have not had the pleasure of reading BROKEN PROMISE, which kicked off Linwood Barclay’s Promise Falls trilogy, should do so before reading the newly published FAR FROM TRUE, the second installment in what is becoming an epic work. While the latter stands on its own as a thriller, readers might get the vague feeling that they have missed something if they are not familiar with what has gone before. They would be right. Given that the first two volumes (and the last, THE TWENTY-THREE, to be published in November) practically flow together, from first page to last, so far the series reads like one big but very fast-moving novel. Starting in the middle is possible, but you’ll enjoy it more from the beginning.

That said, FAR FROM TRUE opens with a bang when a local drive-in movie theater, an iconic institution in Promise Falls --- a small, economically depressed town in upstate New York --- explodes and collapses a week ahead of schedule, killing four people and injuring a number of others. The tragedy makes national news, but the effect is strictly local, echoing and reverberating throughout the book. It is just the type of story that David Harwood, a former Promise Falls reporter and current resident, would have excelled at writing. Harwood, though, doesn’t have a paper to write for and is devoting himself to raising his motherless sons as well as reluctantly working as the campaign manager for the unscrupulous, if not corrupt, former mayor, who is attempting to engineer a political comeback and never lets a serious crisis go to waste.

"Barclay...may be in the midst of his magnum opus here. Don’t miss out on this dark tale of small town evil, which will put you equally in the mind of Sherwood Anderson and Raymond Chandler."

The tragedy means something quite different for the victims’ family and friends. Lucy Brighton retains Cal Weaver, a low-rent private investigator, mere hours after her father, Adam Chalmers, was killed in the unexpected explosion. Lucy had gone to check his house following his death and had surprised a burglar. She initially hires Cal to investigate the break-in, due to the lack of interest from the local police. When he discovers a hidden room there, the investigation takes a whole new turn. The room is obviously being used for performing and recording adult activities. Someone, probably the intruder, has removed all of the DVDs from the room, leaving the jewel boxes behind. Lucy wants Cal to recover those DVDs and destroy them to preserve her father’s reputation.

Meanwhile, Detective Barry Duckworth has his hands full investigating a recent killing that seems to have ties to a similar murder three years previously. Then, of course, there is the drive-in explosion. It appears to have been set deliberately, and the timing, which provides a link to an ongoing series of mysterious and bizarre discoveries, is anything but coincidental in Barry’s mind. These various plot lines race through the book, running parallel to each other, before diverging and then intersecting to an explosive cliffhanger of a conclusion.

Barclay keeps things moving with (relatively) short chapters and very frequent shifts in points of view. It is Cal Weaver who is primarily featured in FAR FROM TRUE, narrating in the first person when his turn comes around and taking what is perhaps the most interesting plot line in a book that is full to the brim with them. Barclay, who has demonstrated that he is incapable of writing poorly ever since the publication of his first novel, BAD MOVE, may be in the midst of his magnum opus here. Don’t miss out on this dark tale of small town evil, which will put you equally in the mind of Sherwood Anderson and Raymond Chandler.