THE TWENTY-THREE is one of those rare books that delivers even more than it promises. It is the final installment in Linwood Barclay’s Promise Falls trilogy --- following BROKEN PROMISE and FAR FROM TRUE --- and not only carries the momentum built by those two titles, but also accelerates it beyond any expectation, reasonable or otherwise. In addition to completing the trilogy, it stands amazingly well on its own as a police procedural that you will read and treasure.

A great deal --- about three-fourths --- of THE TWENTY-THREE occurs over the course of an extremely long and dark day in Promise Falls, that being May 23rd, falling on the Saturday before Memorial Day. The day begins and ends with the spread of what seems to be an illness that is temporarily debilitating at best and horrifyingly fatal at worst while being indiscriminate in its targeting. The cause of the apparent contagion is discovered in due course, but not before Promise Falls loses well over a hundred of its citizens, with scores more being treated at the municipality’s only emergency room, where an overworked medical staff attempts valiantly to stem the tide. Barclay’s narrative ducks into and out of the hospital at regular intervals, always finding something new to see and take in, even as the police department attempts to discern if what has occurred is a deliberate act and, if so, who is behind it.

"Barclay switches perspectives frequently throughout and always with good purpose, moving the story along at warp speed."

Detective Barry Duckworth makes progress on this, with some assistance from a somewhat unlikely source. Meanwhile, Cal Weaver, a private investigator who has had his own share of problems in Promise Falls, pursues an independent investigation, looking not so much at the “what” but at the “who” behind the disaster. Making matters even more complicated is the discovery of a murdered female student at a local college. She has been killed in a similar manner as two other women in the area. The problem is that those prior cases were solved, with the killer brought to justice. Is this latest one a copycat killing, or something worse? The answers are found in Day Two of THE TWENTY-THREE, with the number that marks the title having far more significance than a date.

Barclay’s pacing here is perfect. There is never a point in this book (or in the previous two installments) when matters feel as if they are either dragged or rushed. Barclay switches perspectives frequently throughout and always with good purpose, moving the story along at warp speed. There is also a chilling real world aspect to the sudden mass illnesses and deaths that occur in this book. Given that Barclay finished writing the novel several months ago and conceived it long before then, it is startlingly prophetic, when you consider the recent spate of deaths around the US due to tainted heroin use in smaller communities not dissimilar to Promise Falls.

You won’t read THE TWENTY-THREE thinking that it can’t happen where you live. Odds are it already has.