Book Review : No One Home by Tim Weaver, The 10th David Raker novel and boy, what a good read it is!

Available here

No One Home is due for release tomorrow and I highly recommend it. 
In the past I've read a few Tim Weaver books featuring David Raker, and throughly enjoyed them. However, I've missed out on reading the couple before No One Home ... rest assured that, although probably best to read in order, Weaver very skillfully sketches in enough of a backstory to fill in pertinent information. No One Home read perfectly well as a standalone. 

The fact that No One Home is set in Yorkshire, visiting Keighley, York, Skipton and Bradford is an added bonus for me as an honorary Bradfordian. The bleak moorish settings, the haunging Marie Celeste type village and the relatives' grief are palpable. 



So here's what it's about: 

Blurb

At Halloween, the residents of Black Gale gather for a dinner party. As the only nine people living there, they've become close friends as well as neighbours.

They eat, drink and laugh. They play games and take photographs. But those photographs will be the last record of any of them.

Because by the next morning, the whole village has vanished.

With no bodies, no evidence and no clues, the mystery of what happened at Black Gale remains unsolved two and a half years on. But then the families of the missing turn to investigator David Raker - and their obsession becomes his.

What secrets were the neighbours keeping from their families - and from each other?

Were they really everything they seemed to be?

And is Raker looking for nine missing people - or nine dead bodies?

What I think

I love the concept of a PI focussing on finding missing persons and that is what David Raker has focussed his entire career on. Raker is one of those nuanced characters whose dogged perseverance is juxtaposed by his empathy. When he's enlisted to investigate the enigmatic disappearance of an entire village, Raker's first instinct is to breathe in the essence of the deserted village, the diappeared people's homes and the surrounding area. 

Whilst Raker delves deeper into the mystery of the disappeared families, he is aware of  avery real and present threat. As his investigation leads him back in time to the late 1980's and another disappearance, Raker struggles to link the two investigations. 

Meanwhile, a dual narrative takes us to 1980's Los Angeles where, a female homicide detective is not only battling the innate sexism within the department, but is also  investigating the case that just won't let her go ... that unsolved one that she keeps revisiting ... the one that haunts her dreams and steals her thoughts. 

So .. what links the two narratives?

This is a tricksy, twisty novel with characters that keep you guessing and two plotlines that are equally compleeing . Weaver has that knack of using few words wisely and it is that skill that had me completely hooked. Whilst reading the Raker narrative, I didn't want it to end and whilst reading the LA narratives, I din't want those to end either. So, this was one of these books that you just sail through. The pages kept turning and I read it in no time. 

The ending was explosive on so many levels and although completely satisifed, i now find myself wishing that David Raker Book 11 was sitting in my kindle. However, I know from the crumbs dropped so tantalisingly that there will be a Raker Book 11 in the future.