Caught - Harlan Coben

I still haven’t read any of Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar books (I’ll get to them sooner or later, I’m sure), but I just read his most recent stand-alone, a “suburban noir”, as someone dubbed them, called CAUGHT.


As usual, one of the appeals of a Coben novel is trying to figure out how he’s going to make all the seemingly unrelated plotlines fit together. In this one you’ve got a seemingly decent guy exposed by a tabloid TV program as a pedophile, a missing teenage girl, embezzlement, drug dealing, angst over the economy and people losing their jobs, an execution-style murder, various cops and lawyers, and secrets going back for decades causing trouble in the present in Ross Macdonald-like fashion. Oh, and blogging. But also as usual, Coben manages to make it all make sense, in a series of twists and revelations that carry through all the way to the end of the book, and does so with likeable characters and prose that races right along. CAUGHT is a solidly entertaining novel, and if you’ve enjoyed Coben’s other novels, or if you haven’t tried one yet, it’s well worth reading.

Just One Look - Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben’s JUST ONE LOOK has to be the most complicated novel I’ve read by him so far. In fact, there are so many characters and plotlines introduced in the first fifty pages or so that I figured there was no way he could tie all of them together and have it make any sense.

The main plotline involves suburban New Jersey artist/wife and mother Grace Lawson, who finds an odd photo among some other pictures she’s had developed at a local photo store. It’s an old photo of a group of five college-age people, and Grace thinks one of them might be her husband, whom she didn’t meet until after college. When her husband Jack sees the photo, he takes off without any explanation and disappears, prompting Grace to launch an investigation to find out why he ran off and what has happened to him. As Coben reveals to the reader, Jack Lawson is soon captured by a mysterious Korean assassin who starts slaughtering people right and left. Then you’ve got a former hitman, a U.S. attorney with secrets of his own, gangsters, rock and roll bands, a peeping tom, enigmatic figures pulling strings behind the scenes . . . You get the idea. This is one crowded book.

Despite all that, Coben keeps the action moving right along, including several very suspenseful action scenes, and he creates a strong, sympathetic, and likable heroine in Grace Lawson. And sure enough, he does tie everything together in a fairly logical manner, taking until the next-to-last page to wrap up the final twists. I’ll admit, though, that some of the explanations seemed to come from pretty far out in left field, and the motivations for some of them left me saying, “Is that it?”

Still, JUST ONE LOOK is a very entertaining novel that really kept me turning the pages. I’ll definitely read more of Coben’s work, but probably not for a while, because I don’t want to risk getting burned out on his books.

The Innocent - Harlan Coben

Having read and enjoyed my first Harlan Coben novel recently (THE WOODS), I read THE INNOCENT, which shares a couple of supporting characters with the other book. In this one, the protagonist is Matt Hunter, a young man who gets involved in a fight at a frat party in college, winds up going to prison for manslaughter when one of the people he was fighting with dies, and then tries to rebuild his life after being released. He seems to be doing so: he has a good job as a paralegal, and he’s married to a beautiful woman who’s now pregnant. And then, of course, everything goes haywire as all sorts of trouble from the past crops up. Before you know it, Matt is on the run from the cops, suspected of two murders, and somebody wants him dead.

I enjoyed this one every bit as much as THE WOODS, maybe even a little more. I like the way Coben writes. He has one of those styles that just seems to resonate with me and keeps me turning the pages. And I always like incredibly complex plots where nothing is what it seems to be at first. This one relies a little heavily on coincidence in a place or two, but hey, coincidences happen. For what it’s worth, Coben saves one little twist for the very end, and that one I saw coming, even though I didn’t figure out much of the rest of the book ahead of time.

I have another Coben novel sitting on the shelf waiting to be read soon, JUST ONE LOOK. I’ve been told it’s one of his best. And I plan to get around to his Myron Bolitar series one of these days, too. In the meantime, I recommend THE INNOCENT. It’s a very entertaining book.

The Woods - Harlan Coben

I met Harlan Coben several years ago at a convention, but I’d never read any of his books until now. THE WOODS is the story of Paul Copeland, a county prosecutor from New Jersey who has several tragedies in his past, beginning with the time twenty years earlier when his teenage sister disappeared, presumed to be one of the victims of a serial killer who struck at a summer camp where both the Copeland siblings were staying. Copeland’s mother abandoned her husband and son a few years later, and Copeland’s wife died of cancer a few years before THE WOODS begins. So he’s got plenty of angst on his plate, as well as a high-profile case he’s prosecuting against two wealthy frat boys accused of raping a black, teenage, exotic dancer.

Then a dead body turns up in Manhattan, and son of a gun, the corpse turns out to be one of the summer camp “victims” who supposedly died along with Copeland’s sister. But since this guy was really still alive, maybe Copeland’s sister is, too . . .

As you might expect, things get really complicated from that point. Copeland tries to compartmentalize his life, but that becomes impossible when all the compartments start slamming together. Most mystery readers will probably figure out some of what’s going on, but Coben throws in plenty of twists, some of which I definitely didn’t see coming. The book is paced well for a long novel and the writing flows smoothly. Since it’s the only Coben novel I’ve read, I don’t know where THE WOODS ranks among fans of his work, but I liked it quite a bit and plan to read more of his books.