Promise Me (Myron Bolitar Series #8)

by Harlan Coben

Overview

The bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger reveals the deadly consequences that can be born of the best intentions in this Myron Bolitar thriller.

As the school year winds down, Myron Bolitar is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe from the dangers of drinking and driving. So he makes two neighborhood girls promise him that if they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they must call him. Several nights later, the call comes at two a.m. The next day, a girl is missing and Myron is the last person who saw her. Racing to find her before she’s gone forever, Myron must outrun his own troubled past and decide once and for all who he is and what he will stand up for...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451219244
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/27/2007
Series:	Myron Bolitar Series , #8
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.11(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harlan Coben is the #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including I Will Find You, The Match, Win, Fool Me Once, Stay Close, and The Stranger, as well as the award-winning Myron Bolitar series. Coben has more than eighty million books in print in more than forty languages worldwide, and several of his novels have been made into Netflix series. The winner of Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards, he lives in New Jersey.

Hometown:

Ridgewood, New Jersey

Date of Birth:

January 4, 1962

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

B.A. in political science, Amherst College, 1984

Website:

http://www.harlancoben.com

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Promise Me

“Shows off the best of Mr. Coben’s plotting skills...an intricate, satisfying book.”—*The New York Times 

“The reappearance of Myron Bolitar is welcome, indeed....This book has [page turning suspense] in spades.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Skillful pacing and truly surprising turns of plot.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Coben hits the ground running with the compelling Promise Me.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
 
“It’s a blast.”—San Jose Mercury News

“Supersuspense maestro Coben has again given us an addictive page-turner with plenty of twists, turns, plots, and subplots.”—Forbes

“A hard-edged plot with yet more strands of suburban desperation...After finishing Promise Me, you realize that all the clues to the twists were evident, but you still didn’t see it coming.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A deftly written, well-plotted exploration of the tender underbelly of life in the New Jersey suburbs, where all is not as it seems.”—The Columbus Dispatch


 

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
After six long years, fans of Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar saga (Darkest Fear, The Final Detail, et al.) can finally rejoice: The New Jersey basketball legend turned sports agent and amateur sleuth is back -- and better than ever -- in Promise Me, an addictively readable thriller that turns a simple act of kindness into a convoluted nightmare.

During a "coming out" party to celebrate Bolitar's budding new relationship with freelance writer and 9/11 widow Ali Wilder, the 6'4" former Boston Celtics washout overhears a drunken conversation in his basement between Wilder's daughter, Erin, and Aimee Biel, both students at Bolitar's alma mater, Livingston High School. In an attempt to protect the girls from the potentially deadly situation of accepting a ride with an inebriated acquaintance, Bolitar makes the girls promise him that if they're ever in need of a ride they will call him, regardless of the time or place -- no questions asked. Shortly thereafter, Biel takes him up on his offer. Upholding his promise, Bolitar picks up the Duke-bound high school senior in midtown Manhattan at two o'clock in the morning and drives her to what he thinks is a girlfriend's house in suburban New Jersey -- only to find out the next day that she has gone missing. Vowing to find Biel, Bolitar investigates her personal history and uncovers a viper's nest of dirty little secrets -- secrets that could destroy more than a few prominent Livingston families…

The ingeniously elaborate plot of Promise Me is a virtual roller-coaster ride of wild twists and turns, and no one will be able to predict the bombshell of a conclusion. In a word: Unputdownable. Paul Goat Allen

Promise Me shows off the best of Mr. Coben's plotting skills, though he has overtaxed them in recent books. This time he's got it just right: the story is tricky enough to be exciting but not tricky enough to cause whiplash.
— The New York Times

Janet Maslin

Too bad the book's hero, Myron Bolitar, a former basketball-star-turned-sports-and-entertainment-agent, can't go into politics. Myron vividly learns the perils of promises: They can have unpleasant, disappears. Three months earlier another local teenager had disappeared. Both adolescents had used the same ATM in Manhattan. The book takes off in high gear. (19 Jun 2006)
—Steve Forbes

Forbes Magazine

After six years of spinning jaw-dropping stand-alone thrillers, Coben brings back his sports agent-make that everything agent-Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.) for an encore. Overhearing high-school senior Erin Wilder, his current ladylove's daughter, sharing confidences with her friend Aimee Biel about getting driven by wasted friends, Myron Bolitar promises both girls that if they ever need a ride, they can call him and he'll pick them up, no questions asked. All too soon he gets a chance to deliver. Aimee phones him from midtown Manhattan, where he just happens to be staying, and asks him to drive her to suburban New Jersey. Myron obliges but pushes a bit too hard with the questions, and Aimee vanishes into a strange house. The next day she's still missing, and in jig time the police, armed with Myron's credit-card slips and EZ-Pass records, come calling. It turns out that Myron's not a credible suspect. But because everybody connects Aimee's disappearance to that of fellow student Katie Rochester three months ago, Myron's on the hook with some serious people, from Aimee's parents, who beg him to bring her home, to Katie's mobbed-up dad, who's too proud to beg but has other ways of getting him to cooperate. As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused intensity that have made his thrillers (The Innocent, 2005, etc.) such a hot ticket. Book-of-the-Month Club/Mystery Guild/Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club main selection

Kirkus Reviews

Worrying about the teenaged daughter of his girlfriend and some of her friends, who have been riding with drunk drivers, former Boston Celtics star Myron Bolitar promises to come and get them, wherever they are at any time, no questions asked. True to his word, after a late-night phone call, he picks up one girl and drives her to a friend’s house. The next day she is reported missing, and Bolitar becomes a suspect. He needs all his wits to untangle what began as a well-intentioned promise. Harlan Coben is a master storyteller and an enthusiastic reader. However, his convoluted plot with its fascinating multilayered characters would have benefited from the subtlety and finesse of a professional voice actor. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 06 - AudioFile