Tag Archives: Harlan Coben

Fiction, Reviews

‘Win,’ by Harlan Coben

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Cover of "Win" novel with sticker "From the creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger"

I realize that impersonating an officer is breaking the law, but here is the thing about being rich: You don’t go to jail for crimes like this. The rich hire a bunch of attorneys who will twist reality in a thousand different ways until reality is made irrelevant.

I like Harlan Coben (generally) as an author, and my perception of his Myron Bolitar novels was that I liked them too – though looking at my old reviews, I see that I cooled toward the later books. Too much political correctness had crept in. It looks like the Bolitar series is finished now (I’d forgotten that Coben married the character off in the last volume), but instead we’ve got a new series about his friend Win Lockhart. I’ve never liked Win much as a character, but for odd reasons I enjoyed the novel, Win quite a lot. And the nature of the main character kept the PC suppressed a bit.

Win Lockhart used to fill the niche in the Bolitar books that I’ve designated the “psycho killer friend.” In many mystery series, your rational, decent hero has a very dangerous friend he can call on when the bad guys threaten and the odds get long. Win was an eccentric example of the PKF. Born to an elite family, exclusively educated, small and effete-appearing, he is nevertheless a master of unarmed and armed combat, the kind of guy who can kill a man twice his size quickly, with his bare hands. I always found Win implausible and affected. But he worked better here, in the first person.

The police call Win to an exclusive Upper West Side apartment building, to a penthouse tower apartment. There, in a room with a murdered man, they have found two items long missing – a Vermeer painting that was stolen from Win’s family years ago, and a custom-made suitcase that once belonged to Win himself. How does Win account for that?

Win knows nothing about how the painting got there, but he had given the suitcase to Patricia, a female cousin of whom he is very fond. He doesn’t believe she murdered this man – whoever he was – but he’s not going to tell the police about it. He’ll investigate the matter himself.

His investigation will take him into a maze of old secrets, secrets related to radical antiwar violence of the days of Vietnam, and dark family secrets that Win thinks he knows about – but does not. Yet.

In the Bolitar books, Win was always presented as a kind of psychopath whose only true relationship was with his friend Myron . Which I found unpersuasive. In Win, presented in the first person, we get further inside him. He proves to be a man of (relatively) normal empathies who was traumatized as a child and whose emotional energy has been diverted into strange channels. This works better for me, though I’m still not sure it’s entirely plausible.

The plot has multiple resolutions, some of them morally problematic. But they satisfied me as a reader.

Also, the author had a chance to trash evangelical Christians, and chose not to. I always appreciate that.

Cautions for the usual stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Boy from the Woods,’ by Harlan Coben

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I’ve become a fan of Harlan Coben’s novels, especially since he moved out of sports-based mysteries to more domestic stories, in which responsible husbands and fathers go to extraordinary lengths to rescue family members.

I’m not so keen on the turn he’s taken with his latest novel, The Boy from the Woods.

The hero of The Boy from the Woods is a man known only as Wilde. Wilde comes equipped with a fairly implausible back story. As a boy, he was found living in the New Jersey woods, apparently a feral child – although he could speak and read English. No family ever stepped forward to claim him. He entered the military, and then briefly became a private investigator. He still lives in the woods.

The closest thing he has to a family is that of Hester Crimstein (a continuing character who often shows up in Corben’s novels), a tiny but relentless celebrity criminal lawyer. He was particularly close to her youngest son, who died in an auto accident. Now he’s kind of a mentor to her grandson Matthew, who’s in high school.

One day Matthew contacts Wilde and asks for his help. A girl in his class, Naomi Pine, has disappeared. Naomi had been the victim of universal bullying in their school. Matthew is concerned she may have done herself harm.

Wilde’s investigation will lead to unexpected connections with the campaign of a popular presidential candidate, one whom Hester dislikes and fears. This man (a sort of cross between Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh, by way of Nietzsche and Mussolini) has secrets he will go to any length to cover up. However, even when the truth comes out at great cost, it will prove to be not quite the truth.

The Boy from the Woods kept my interest all the way through. However, some aspects of the story never worked for me. The “feral child” thing struck me as unlikely. (From what I’ve read, such children have been found from time to time in the real world, but they were pitiful physical specimens, nothing like the hunk Wilde has grown into). The mystery of his origins is clearly meant to be an ongoing thread in future books (this is obviously the beginning of a series), but it didn’t convince me.

Also – for no reason I can think of, except to score points with feminists – a group of security people consisting entirely of women (except for one transgender) is introduced. And when Wilde merely hints that their boss (a friend of his) might want to find a less dangerous job, since she’s the mother of four small kids, he gets shot down hard for sexism.

Also, the resolution of the story is unsatisfying in multiple ways.

So my final verdict is that The Boy from the Woods is an interesting, engaging (though ultimately frustrating) story, I don’t think I’ll follow the series any further.

Cautions for language and mature themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Run Away,’ by Harlan Coben

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He’d later learn that it was for show, that Ingrid had the same fears and insecurities that plague all of us, that part of the human condition is that all decent people think they are phonies and don’t belong at some point or another.

The same but different. That’s what Harlan Coben’s novels tend to be. All based on themes of the strength of love, and the danger of secrets. But each one very much its own story. That goes also for his new novel, Run Away, which I liked very much.

Simon Greene is a successful financial advisor. He becomes a YouTube sensation briefly, when he attacks a homeless man in New York’s Central Park. What all the people who liked and shared his video, commenting on how evil he was, didn’t know, was that he was trying to help his drug addict daughter, to save her from the homeless man, who had gotten her hooked in the first place.

The daughter gets away. But then Simon and his wife Ingrid get a tip about someone who might be able to help them find her. They end up in a New York crack house, and shots are fired…

And Simon must go on alone to follow faint leads into a convoluted tangle of bizarre criminal conspiracies. Gradually he learns that his daughter’s plight is only peripheral to a much larger crime, and he will be placed on a lengthening list of people marked for murder, due to no fault of their own.

I found Run Away pretty amazing. Not only does Coben trace the familiar ground of family love and loss, and parental sacrifice, but he also creates a pair of unforgettable villains – remorseless killers who happen to be deeply in love, and very sympathetic in their scenes together. That kind of ambivalence shakes me more than distilled evil ever could. And the final revelation of the story was a genuine shocker, one to keep you awake pondering.

I thought the climax of Run Away a little far-fetched, but overall I consider it one of Coben’s best. Highly recommended. As usual with Coben, the profanity is minimal.

Fiction, Reviews

‘No Second Chance,’ by Harlan Coben

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Conner nodded, pleased by my response. I love him. He breaks my heart and brings me joy in equal measure and at exactly the same time. Twenty-six months old. Two months older than Tara. I watch his development with awe and a longing that could heat a furnace.

Harlan Coben has a winning formula for turning out thrillers that grab the reader. He starts with love – love for lovers, for spouses, and (especially) love for one’s children. Then he asks, “What do we fear the most for these people?” Then he takes that fear and distills it, producing at the end of the coils a spirit that burns like carbolic acid. And he applies that spirit to some innocent, fairly decent protagonist.

That, my friends, is how story-building works.

No Second Chance stars Dr. Marc Seidman, plastic surgeon, who wakes up in a hospital room to learn he’s been in a coma for weeks. He was shot in his own home, and barely survived. His wife, also shot, did not survive.

And his infant daughter Tara vanished like smoke

The police have no leads. Their best theory is that Marc himself engineered his wife’s murder, but that theory makes no sense, and they know it.

Then a ransom note comes to Marc’s wealthy father-in-law. He and Marc agree to involve the police, but they will regret it, because the cops get spotted, the kidnappers get away with the money, and Tara remains lost.

The next time a demand comes, eighteen months later, they leave the cops out. But Marc instead brings in someone from his past, a former FBI agent he dated in college and nearly married. Working with an old lover can be a complication in any endeavor – but this time it might blow up in all their faces.

I like most of Harlan Coben’s books, and I liked No Second Chance more than most. The plot is very complex, but it’s revealed in layers, which kept this old man from getting confused (I like that). There were also some intriguing side characters, like a former child actress turned stone-cold-hitwoman, and a mullet-wearing, NRA-member, redneck who turns out to be good friend to have in a corner (this book is a few years old. I wonder if Coben would have the nerve to include such a character in a novel today).

Highly recommended, with cautions for intensity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Live Wire,’ by Harlan Coben

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Live Wire

Another Harlan Coben novel, this time in his Myron Bolitar series. Myron is a sports, literary, and actors’ agent, and for some reason he keeps getting involved in investigating crimes. This one hits closer to home than most.

Live Wire begins with an appeal from “Suzze T,” a tennis star client married to a rock star. Suzze recently gave birth to a baby, and someone posted a comment on her Facebook page, saying that the baby is “not his.” Just a troll, you’d think, but now her husband has disappeared. Can Myron find him and bring him back?

As he investigates the husband’s last known movements, Myron gets a look at a night club closed circuit surveillance recording, and sees a familiar face – his sister-in-law, Kitty, also once a tennis star. Myron hasn’t seen Kitty or his brother in fifteen years. Myron didn’t trust her, and made accusations. The last time he saw his brother, he broke his nose. Now he wants nothing more than to see him again and apologize.

But Kitty is hard to find, and she has secrets. And then somebody dies, and the whole mystery plunges into a tangle of old and toxic secrets, while a ruthless killer lurks in the background. Of course Myron has his own dangerous weapon, in the person of his best friend, Win Lockwood.

Live Wire is in many ways a heartbreaking story, well told. Coben’s usual themes of loyalty and family love are front and center. LW also serves as a launching pad for Coben’s young adult mystery series starring Myron’s nephew Mickey Bolitar. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Stay Close,’ by Harlan Coben

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Stay Close

I reviewed a miniseries created by Harlan Coben a few days back, and so I decided to read a couple more Coben novels. Stay Close was the first. Although it doesn’t follow the usual template for a Coben stand-alone, it had all the familiar elements. And you won’t hear me complaining.

We start with Ray Levine, an Atlantic City photographer at the bottom of his profession. Once a promising photojournalist, a traumatic event several years ago left him adrift. Now he’s – not a paparazzo – but a fake paparazzo. He follows the customers around with a camera, trying to make them feel like big shots on important days in their lives.

And then he gets a glimpse of Megan Pierce. Ray was in love with Megan once, when she was a stripper he knew as “Cassie.” Megan is a suburban wife now, with a pretty good life. Only sometimes she misses the excitement of the old days. And when she makes a discreet visit to a bar where she used to dance, she gets some very dangerous people furiously trying to locate her.

Finally there’s Broome, an old detective trying to solve old mysteries. All of these people have theories about a particular missing persons case. All their theories are wrong. The truth will shock them and put their lives, and those of their loved ones, at risk.

Harlan Coben excels at creating layered, relatable characters. Even the bad guys are understandable, and sometimes almost sympathetic. Except for a couple characters in this book who seemed over the top to me. A sociopathic couple who work as a hit team, and are apparently Mormon missionaries (or something similar) in their off hours. I found them a little hard to swallow.

But the book was exciting – in fact it was one of those I had to take in small doses, because of the constant peril to innocent people – and the conclusion was satisfying. Recommended with the usual cautions.

Reviews

Netflix Review: ‘Safe’

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Safe

Back in 2006, a French movie appeared, based on Harlan Coben’s novel Tell No One. I’ve seen it on Netflix. It’s a pretty good thriller. Coben says he agreed to sell the rights to the French company rather than taking an American offer, because the filmmakers understood the story – that it’s primarily a love story, not a mystery.

Although he takes his material overseas again (this time to England) for the miniseries Safe, available for viewing now on Netflix, I think it’s not as successful as the French movie. But it’s a pretty fair entertainment.

In spite of the uprooted location, Safe is a very recognizable Coben story. You’ve got a secure (in this case gated) upper middle-class suburban community, where neighbors are friends and everybody knows everybody’s business (or thinks they do). You’ve got a family friend who tells some of the kids that if they ever need a designated driver, call him night or day – no questions, no snitching to the parents. You’ve got a teenagers’ party that gets out of hand – a boy drowns. Then a girl disappears. Then the clues lead back to very old, buried secrets.

American actor Michael C. Hall plays Dr. Tom Delaney, widowed father of the missing girl. (His English accent sounds OK to me, but apparently the actual English have laughed at it.) His relationship with his daughter Jenny (Amy James-Kelly) has been strained, since her mother’s death from cancer. He desperately tries to trace Jenny’s movements on the night of the party, assisted by his best friend, a gay doctor, and his girlfriend, a police detective. Clues lead to drug dealing, concealment of a body, and a guilty secret shared by members of the close-knit community.

I found the solution, and the Big Surprise that followed it, a little improbable and forced. However, the series as a whole was compelling and I enjoyed it. Cautions for mature themes and a few obscenities.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Don’t Let Go,’ by Harlan Coben

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Don't Let Go

Harlan Coben is one of the best of our thriller writers. Instead of voyeuristic violence and obscenity, Coben specializes in profound moral dilemmas, psychological depth, and generally clean prose. I’m a fan. His latest, Don’t Let Go, is OK, but I don’t consider it one of his best.

Napoleon “Nap” Dumas is a policeman in a New Jersey suburb. He has a minor, unofficial sideline in beating up guys who seriously hurt women and can’t be touched by the law. He’s carrying a lot of suppressed anger, going back to one terrible night in his senior year in high school, when his twin brother and his girlfriend were killed in an accident, and his own girlfriend disappeared without a goodbye.

Now there’s been a murder in the town where he lives. The victim was a fellow cop, killed during a traffic stop. But inside the stopped car a set of fingerprints are found – the fingerprints of Maura, Nap’s long-lost girlfriend.

The old case is opened, and Nap is about to learn that many shocking things were covered up that awful night when his brother died. The cover-ups were not only the work of a shadowy government agency, but of some of his best, most trusted friends.

I was a little disappointed with Don’t Let Go. I thought that author Coben fell into some storyteller’s tropes unworthy of his talent. And I thought the final resolution overly complex and not very plausible.

But it kept my interest all through, and was moving in places. You could do worse.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Darkest Fear,’ by Harlan Coben

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Darkest Fear

Her blue-black hair fell in big, loose curls, like thermal fax paper fresh out of the machine.

This is more like it.

I positively reviewed Harlan Coben’s latest Myron Bolitar novel, Home, a few days back. My only real quibble with the book was that the author seemed to be taking particular pains to virtue-signal – to demonstrate very obviously his politically acceptable views on gay marriage and cultural appropriation.

This earlier novel, Darkest Fear, avoids most of that. It’s just a fun mystery/thriller.

This time out, Myron is contacted by an old girlfriend, to whom he has no desire to talk. Not only did she break his heart years ago, but she broke it in favor of the guy who was responsible for the knee injury that ended Myron’s basketball career before it started. But now she insists on seeing him. She has a teenaged son who suffers from a fatal bone marrow disease. Only a marrow transplant can save him. One genetic match has been found in this country, but that person has inexplicably dropped off the grid.

Oh, and one further thing – Myron is actually the boy’s natural father.

Myron picks up the quest, which leads to a wealthy and secretive family, and to a series of unsolved serial killings. Several people may be the real killer – and the killer may even be the donor.

Darkest Fear is a fun story, full of excitement, humor, and heart. I enjoyed it immensely. Language is relatively mild, and adult situations not too extreme.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Home,’ by Harlan Coben

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Home, Coben

Part way through my reading of Home, Harlan Coben’s latest Myron Bolitar novel, I remembered that I had sworn off these books not too long ago. It’s not that Coben isn’t a superior storyteller. And it’s not that he doesn’t offer the kind of character insight and humanity that I crave from an author. I just felt he’d gotten too PC for my taste. But I carried on, having purchased the book, and enjoying the story. Home is a good novel, but marred (for me, probably not for most readers) by progressive elements.

In this outing, we start with Win Lockhart, Myron’s wealthy, effete-but-deadly, longtime friend. Win has dropped out of sight to hunt for a missing person, his sister’s kidnapped son, gone ten years. His search has brought him to London, where he locates a boy who looks to him like his nephew’s friend, also kidnapped on the same occasion. In approaching the boy, he encounters three thugs, whom he easily dispatches. But the boy takes fright and runs away. That’s when Win calls Myron, who drops everything and flies to London to help in the search.

They encounter criminals and pimps in their investigation, but most of all they encounter lies. The lies are old, and deeply buried, and the true secrets lie not in London, but close to home. Old wounds are opened, and old betrayals revealed. The final resolution of the story is remarkable for its grace – but there’s a less inspirational anticlimax.

Home is a very good book. Author Coben possesses deep empathy for the human situation, drawing the reader in and making us care. My problem is mainly with two characters, Esperanza and Big Cindy, who are a married lesbian couple. I suspect they were originally added to the cast of the books for purposes of comic relief. But changing times have persuaded the author to treat them with increasing earnest seriousness. For me, this is a conformist and disappointing element in stories this good and well-grounded in human nature. Various hints suggest that Coben himself does not entirely buy into modern ideas about gender and gender roles, but he nevertheless genuflects to all the prescribed altars, in this and other matters.

Other than that, highly recommended. Coben doesn’t use much bad language, and the sex and violence are relatively restrained.