Zack is a sci fi author who is paranoid, safety conscious, & an asshole who lectures his family for not locking doors, leaving shoes at the front door, car keys in the ignition, & backpacks on stairs. He's smug at taking his wife's car keys & hiding her car to "teach her a lesson". One lesson goes too far when he takes a purse out of what he thought was his wife's shopping cart. Turns out it wasn't and that leads to murder, cover ups, shady home owners association, & missing children. A little contrived, a little unbelievable, & a little thrown together. Not interested in the rest of the series ( )

This is the 1st Zack Walker novel.
The Walker family move out of the City to live in the Suburbs where the feel it is safer.
Zack is a bit anal about lots of things, he annoys his Wife Sarah and teenage children Angie and Paul.
The new house they live in is a bit shoddily built. Zack is always complaining to the Builders.

Zack goes for a walk one day and stumbles across the dead body of the local environmentalist, he also tries to play a trick on his Wife Sarah at the local Supermarket and takes her handbag, its not Sarah's but a local Woman who works for the House builders.
This is when things really start to go wrong for Zach,
He finds the dead body of Stefanie Knight, he then gets involved with the local Baddies, Zach enlists the help of his neighbours Earl and Trixie they arent all the appear to be. Especially Earl.
(Zach really should have went to the Police by this point)
His family are all safe, Baddies all taken care of.
The Walkers decide to move back to the Big City.

OK Book this you can tell its a Linwood Barclay novel Fist written before he hit the big time. ( )

I had the opportunity to speak to Linwood Barclay at Thrillerfest about this book. I told him how much I enjoyed the humor. He (as well as other authors) have warned me that humor and mystery don't sell. :( ( )

From Amazon:

In the too-quiet town of Oakwood, only the lucky die of boredom…and new homeowner Zack Walker isn’t feeling lucky. Whoever said the burbs were boring will think twice after reading Linwood Barclay’s hilarious debut mystery, in which Dad learns the hard way that he doesn’t always know best.

Zack wouldn’t blame you for thinking he’s safety-obsessed. True, he masterminded a plot to trade his family’s exciting city lifestyle for one of suburban tranquillity. True, even after this strategic move, Zack still has issues with family members who forget their keys in the front door, leave their cars unlocked, or park their backpacks at the top of the stairs—where you could kill yourself tripping over them. Just ask his wife, Sarah, or his teenage kids, Paul and Angie, who endure their share of lectures.

Zack knows that he needs to chill out and assume the best for once—but we know what happens to those who assume. When Zack realizes their two-faced developer sent a petty thief to fix their leaky shower, he starts fighting hard to ignore the fact that Oakwood isn’t the crime-free paradise he was hoping for. But his brief state of denial comes to an abrupt end when, during a walk by the creek, he stumbles across a dead body. Even more shocking, Zack actually knows who the victim is—and who might want him dead.

My Thoughts:

A decent book but not a great book. That being said... I love a good mystery....and Barclay can certainly weave the best. His ability to weave humor into the story is great, but in this book there was just a bit too much. I found myself skimming through all of the funny to get to the mystery. I liked the book but not as much as his other novels. ( )

This one is a whole different feel than his other works. It was a fun light myster/humourous novel.

Zack Walker is control, paranoid freak and wanting to teach his wife a lesson in not leaving her purse wide open at the grocery store where someone can take it, decides to take it and hide the purse. he made the mistake of taking another woman`s purse and gets him in trouble, more than he could imagined.

Great novel, had fun reading this one and since it`s a series will read and see what else can happen to Zack Walker. ( )