12/17/2018
In this bombshell-laden thriller from bestseller Coben (Don’t Let Go), Wall Street financial adviser Simon Greene and his pediatrician wife have a perfect life by all outward appearances—except that they haven’t seen their drug-addicted daughter, Paige, in six months. When by chance Simon spots Paige panhandling in Central Park, he approaches her, but Aaron Corval, her junkie boyfriend, who he believes is holding her against her will, confronts him, and the two get into a fight. Paige flees the scene. When Aaron later turns up dead in an abandoned house in the Bronx, Simon and his daughter become suspects in his murder. Vowing to find Paige at any cost, Simon soon finds his search intertwined with a Chicago PI’s case to locate a missing person. Though the sheer amount of jaw-dropping plot twists is impressive, some do come across as a bit contrived. Still, the breakneck pacing and audaciously intricate story line will have readers on the edge of their seats. Seven-city author tour. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary. (Mar.)
Narrator Steven Weber is the perfect match for this thriller, which blends plot twists and suspense in equal portions. Simon and Ingrid Greene, a successful and apparently perfect couple, find their lives falling apart in the most dramatic of ways when their drug-addicted daughter disappears after dropping out of college. With seeming ease, Weber voices the cast of characters, who range from the most privileged to those at the edges of society. His characterizations mainly employ authentic-sounding accents and changes in tone. His timing helps to build the ever-increasing suspense, allowing the listener to savor every twist of the Greenes’ situation. K.J.P. 2019 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2018-12-11
A Manhattan money manager who once had it all is threatened with losing most of it in Coben's latest greased-lightning domestic thriller.
Things haven't been that great for Simon Greene ever since his daughter, Paige, dropped out of college and disappeared. But his world turns much darker the day that, following a tip, he sees her playing guitar in Central Park and tries to talk to her. Paige, clearly strung out on drugs, takes off, and the closest Simon comes to catching her is punching her companion, junkie Aaron Corval, in the face. His attack, captured on the phone videos of passers-by, goes viral, and he's rebuked by millions of strangers. Three months later, Bronx Homicide Detective Isaac Fagbenle turns up in Simon's office asking questions about the murder of Aaron, who vanished instead of sticking around to press charges. Simon and his pediatrician wife, Ingrid, go to visit the crime scene in the hope of picking up Paige's trail, and moments after one of Aaron's scuzzball neighbors warns them, "Even if you find her, this story won't have a happy ending," bullets fly, sending Ingrid to the hospital in a coma. Meanwhile, Chicago PI Elena Ramirez is hired to find the missing adopted son of wealthy Sebastian Thorpe III, and a mysterious pair named Ash and Dee Dee are executing a laid-off meat packer in Boston and a tattoo artist in suburban New Jersey. Clearly all this mayhem is somehow connected, and readers spoiled by Coben's long history of triple-barreled thrillers (Don't Let Go, 2017, etc.) will be turning the pages with bated breath. But the broadly hinted connection, a Maine religious commune to which Dee Dee professes undying loyalty, is more cartoonish than compelling, and the alternating chapters recounting the investigations of Simon and Elena dilute the suspense instead of intensifying it. By the time the double-twist payoff arrives, fans will be torn between dissatisfaction and relief.
In seeking to extend his formidable range, Coben overreaches: the far-flung complications feel forced and schematic rather than nightmarish. Wait till next year.
