The Blackbird by Tim Weaver
Like many of the best contemporary thrillers this book starts with a powerful mystery that seems to defy rational explanation; and then we wait expectantly travelling alongside the investigator as he or she chips away, like Michelangelo when carving David from an enigmatic block of marble, to reveal everything. In this case our guide is David Raker, a private investigator who has made his reputation finding missing people and solving mysteries that have defeated the authorities. As a result, he has a newspaper profile and a mixed relationship with the police.
The enigma here facing Raker has been brought to him by the desperate parents of Cate Gascoigne. She and her husband Aiden had been involved in an horrific car crash on Gatton Hill near Reigate. The happy smiling couple was captured on CCTV a few seconds before they plunged down a ravine and their car burst into flames; they didn’t stand a chance. Yet when the police arrived on the scene, called by two separate witnesses, there were no burnt bodies. And as the months passed by nothing has turned up – no miraculous escape and reappearance, no explanation for what happened to them.
Raker initially follows two strands: the witnesses and the background of the missing couple. Cate, a vivacious, determined photographer is working on a new project related to historic crimes and this seems a fertile area for exploration. Cate and Aiden seem like a golden couple – attractive, successful and popular. Raker is, therefore, even more intrigued that it appears Cate’s new project provided one of the few examples of conflict in their solid relationship.
From that point onwards, the plot twists and turns in a pleasurable way. Weaver is equally adept at drawing the reader into the minutiae of Raker’s investigation and thrilling them with muscular descriptions of action scenes. A great deal of the success of such a book rests on how much the reader enjoys Raker’s company. At first, I found him a little too cool, composed and competent. However, this is the reassuring front he gives to his clients because he has great empathy for their suffering. In addition, Raker has secrets of his own that make him vulnerable. Although this manifests itself in a totally independent narrative strand that is going on in a separate part of his life, it is no great spoiler to say that Weaver gradually melds the different parts of Raker's life into the central mystery.
No more spoilers, other than to say that the extended denouement is thrilling and tense. It is satisfying because it is just on the right side of that clichéd but important marker: the suspension of disbelief test. Weaver has written a series of books featuring Raker, and so the best recommendation I can give is that when I’m looking for a page turning, comfort read in the future, I’m happy to try another one of them.