Linwood Barclay: How I became a best-selling thriller writer

By YORK MEMBERY

Updated: 03:31 EDT, 4 August 2025

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Linwood Barclay is most known for his best-selling thriller No Time for Goodbye, published in 2007.

It became a Richard and Judy summer pick that sold more than a million copies in the UK alone.

A French TV adaptation, Cette nuit-la, was broadcast this year.

The 70-year-old former journalist has written 25 novels, with combined worldwide sales of eight million.

The father-of-two lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife Neetha.

What did your parents teach you about money?

To be careful with it. My dad Everett was a commercial artist who drew car adverts for US magazines in the 1950s. But in the 1960s that work dried up so my parents decided to buy a trailer park in Ontario and move there. We lived as a family in a 60ft mobile home, with cell-sized bedrooms.

Mazda fan: Linwood Barclay, 70, has written 25 books and is most known for his best-selling thriller No Time for Goodbye

But my life was turned upside down after Dad died of lung cancer aged 59, when I was 16. It hit my mum Muriel hard, and since my older brother was mentally ill, she put much of the responsibility for running the trailer park on my shoulders.

Overnight I became 'the man of the family'. That 'watching the pennies' mindset is probably why I might think nothing of splashing out on a cool car but could then circle a block over and over again looking for a free place that costs nothing rather than spend a few dollars on a paid-for parking spot.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

Money was certainly on the tight side in my early years as a journalist in the late 1970s. I was paid all of C$120 [£65] a week on my first newspaper, the Peterborough Examiner, which even then was terrible pay. In due course I got a pay rise, so within 18 months I was on C$200 [£108] a week, but that was hardly big money. My wife and I had just got married and had to be careful to live within our means.

Have you ever been paid silly money?

I was paid what some might regard as a ridiculous amount of money following the success of No Time for Goodbye and received some very nice royalty cheques for multiples of what I was making as a newspaper columnist. But the most life-changing aspect of receiving those cheques was that it allowed me to quit my day job.

What was the best year of your financial life?

Probably the years 2009 and 2010, after the publication of No Time for Goodbye. For a little while my annual income was a low seven figure sum [Canadian dollars]. All my novels have done well, and I have one book left to deliver on my current three-book contract, but No Time for Goodbye was super successful and launched my career as a thriller writer.

The most expensive thing you have bought for fun?

Getting a two-foot-long model of Supercar, the iconic vehicle from the cult 1960s Gerry Anderson children's TV show of the same name, which was privately commissioned at a cost of C$5,000 [£2,710]. I also bought a cute black two-seater Mazda Miata convertible for C$40,000 [£21,690] after signing the contract for No Time for Goodbye.

What is your biggest money mistake?

Clothes-wise, buying a grey UNTUCKit dress shirt. I wore it once and thought: 'Uh-uh, big mistake!' It was the stupidest shirt I ever bought. Car-wise, getting a Mexican-made new VW Beetle in 1999 for around C$20,000 [nearly £11,000] – what a piece of junk! We never had a car that we kept for such a short time. The headlights burnt out and the knobs broke off. It was just terrible. Getting rid of it was like being cured of a disease.

Best money decision you have made?

Getting a good financial adviser who can make my big money decisions. I know how to write books that make money, and how to spend it, but I have no idea how to invest it.

Family man: Linwood with daughter Paige and son Spencer in 1992

Will you pass your money down or spend it all?

My wife and I will do our best to help out our kids and grandkids financially. We figure that they are going to get it someday anyway, so why not sooner rather than later?

Do you have a pension?

Yes, I draw an income from my investments and receive a monthly state pension. But despite now being 70, as long as I can keep plotting out a story, I'll keep writing novels. I'm already itching to start my next book…

Do you own any property?

Yes, a three-storey, five-bedroom house in downtown Toronto. Similar houses sell for around C$3million [£1.6million]. I also have a holiday home on the water in Prince Edward County, a two-hour drive away, worth around C$2million [£1.1million].

If you were Chancellor what would you do?

If I was minister of finance in Canada [the equivalent position], I would be out of the job in a week. I keep my own financial records but, when I compare them to my bank statements, they are so far off it is embarrassing. I react to finances the way some react to spiders – recoil in fear!