Harlan Coben is the master of writing a type of book that is one of my favorite genres - the "mystery that is rooted in something that happened long ago." How he churns these out on such a regular basis is beyond me. For the past several years he's divided his time between stand-alone thrillers of this type, and novels featuring his long-time characters, Myron Bolitar and Win Lockwood.I'm not sure that "Caught" is his best stand-alone, but if you're looking for the proverbial "page turner that you can't put down," you could do a lot worse. Another thing that Coben does very well is to hook the reader in the very first chapter, and "Caught" is no exception. In that very first chapter, we're introduced to Dan Mercer, a social worker dedicated to helping young kids. By the end of that chapter, Mercer has been caught in a made-for-television sting designed to capture sexual predators.
Along the way, we're introduced to the "investigative reporter" who comes to find that nothing is quite as it seems, a young girl whose disappearance is somehow linked to Mercer but no one can quite figure out how, a couple of veteran, somewhat plodding but competent detectives trying to make sense of it all, and a group of unemployed fathers who gather each morning at the local Starbucks and try to pretend that their lives are the same as they've always been. The book also has brief cameos for Lockwood and another Coben favorite, Hester Crimstein, defense lawyer extraordinaire.
It's an entertaining if somewhat nerve-wracking journey, and of course, all of the answers are rooted in something that happened long ago.
1 comment:
I adore Coben, that was so surprising to see a post about him in your blog (which i found absolutely by chance)! I've managed to read only "The Long Lost" and "Hold Tight" but alraylove him, in my list are also "The Innocent" and "Just One Look", but unfortunately never had a chance to find "Caught" in bookstores, though looked through almost all of them in my city.
Post a Comment