With a truly unique and clever premise, best-selling author Linwood Barclay’s Find You First is an incredible thrill ride with non-stop action. It is full of smart and funny dialogue, plus Barclay is a master of ending chapters with a cliffhanger, so there is simply no putting this book down once you get started.
Miles Cookson is a very wealthy, single, tech entrepreneur who has just been diagnosed with an incurable genetic disease. The doctor, believing Miles has no children, explains that there would have been a fifty percent chance of this disease being passed along to any offspring. Miles, however, knows that twenty years ago when he needed money to start the company that has now made him a millionaire, he sold sperm to a fertility clinic. Miles now wants to find any children produced who share his genetic code, both to inform them of this possibility as well as include them in a share of his fortune.
At the same time that Miles is beginning his search, Chloe Swanson is in the process of documenting the memories of some of her family members and starting to search for her biological father. Her mother, who Chloe knows used a sperm bank in order to become pregnant, and then raised Chloe with her partner, is against the idea and refuses to provide Chloe with any information. Chloe, however, is undaunted and her fearless spirit coupled with her level-headedness makes her an extremely likeable character almost immediately.
There are also much less likeable characters throughout the story, starting with Todd Cox. We meet Todd in the prologue, where he is running a sadly common scam on elderly men and women. He thinks he has been caught red-handed at his con game, but in reality things are much worse for him than he realises.
As Miles Cookson begins to look for his biological children, they suddenly begin to disappear. One by one, the people on his list of nine descendants begin to meet with strange or mysterious circumstances. More than just disappearances, it seems as if someone is trying to erase every trace of their existence. Whoever it is that is doing this seems to have a head start on Miles.
Barclay has filled this thriller with well-drawn, memorable characters, fast paced action and unpredictable twists. There is a reason he has such a loyal fan base! In Find You First, Barclay has given us an exciting puzzle to solve, and tremendously interesting characters to solve it with.
Find You First is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 4th 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend, and everything he could dream of—except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a fifty percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past . . .
Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids—nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him—maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse.
As Miles begins to search for the children he’s never known, aspiring film documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father, armed with the knowledge that twenty-two years ago, her mother used a New York sperm bank to become pregnant.
When Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Miles’s other potential heirs are vanishing—every trace of them wiped, like they never existed at all.
Who is the vicious killer—another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something even more sinister going on?
It’s a deadly race against time . . .
