Harm’s Reach

Author/Guide: Alex Barclay

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2000s: A Bi-polar FBI agent has her work cut out – In the end the truth will find you……

ISBN: 978-0007494514
Genre: Crime, Thriller

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What you need to know before your trail

Special Agent Ren Bryce discovers the body of a young woman in an abandoned car, things look very strange indeed and not just because of the obvious. so, she starts digging and as she uncovers answers, more questions start to pop up in their place. There is going to have to be a lot of digging and a lot of putting the pieces together.

The young woman, Laura Flynn, was supposed to be where her employers thought she was but instead she was apparently on her way to a home for troubled teens in Colorado?

And what did she know about a case that happened more than 50 years ago? As this case is reopened following her death…

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Interestingly, the prologue ends with a Swedish proverb which more than sets the scene for the rest of the book –

“Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen”
Everyone knows the monkey but the monkey knows no one. Those that stick out are often both well-known and avoided. But sometimes in life this doesn’t always happen of course.

Everyone has secrets and everyone is hiding something in this novel even the Special agent herself. But when a letter arrives it carries a message that also sets the scene for how one secret can cause damage across the years –
“…the reach of good men is often hindered. In contrast, I fear that harm’s reach has no bounds, and – far worse – invisible fingers.”

These secrets weave through the novel and tie in one place to another – from Denver to Jefferson county and across the USA to New York. The Colorado scenes in particular are set in remote landscapes with the shadows and black spindly fingers of the old trees threatening Laura’s car on the empty path. This seems to be bandit country with names such as Shark bait bandits and there has been a recent raid on the local banks. Then a body shows up, and a ranch for troubled teams set back in rural land becomes part of the landscape and suddenly secrets spill out across these remote and harsh environments.