A solid, muscular thriller, well-spun.
Veteran thriller-maven Crais (Taken, 2012, etc.) returns with a pleasingly perplexing storyline fresh from the headlines.
The heroine of the piece is Maggie, a 3-year-old German shepherd on her second deployment as a patrol and bomb-sniffing dog in Afghanistan. She is fiercely loyal to her handler—so when the inevitable happens, as it does in the evocative, grisly set piece that opens Crais’ latest, she’s thrown for a loop. Crais has to get a little didactic to provide the basis for innocent civilians: “Dogs suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder shared similar stress reactions with humans, and could sometimes be retrained, but it was slow work that required great patience on the part of the trainer, and enormous trust on the part of the dog.” True dat. For her sacrifice, Maggie is not sent to live out her life on the farm, but instead teamed up with trauma-stricken, guilt-ridden LAPD officer Scott James, who, like Maggie, has lost his partner in action. The difference is that Maggie’s handlers know who the bad guys were, whereas James has to go Rambo and find out who shot up him and his friend. The answer, revealed after a sequence of carefully plotted, well-described episodes, won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s read James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, though the resolution is more up-to-date. The story takes in vast swaths of Los Angeles in all its multicultural glory, with baddies in the drug and diamond and policing businesses alike. And it’s oddly affecting, with Crais ably capturing the bond between humans and canines without veering into sentimentality.
A solid, muscular thriller, well-spun.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16148-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic...
Another one of Coben’s got-it-all New Jersey dads finds out that his wonderful wife has been hiding a whopper of a secret from him—a secret whose trail leads to even more monstrous revelations.
“We’re living the dream,” Tripp Evans assures Adam Price at their sons’ sixth-grade lacrosse all-star team draft—lacrosse, for crying out loud. But the dream is already slipping from Adam’s grasp as Tripp speaks. Minutes earlier, a young stranger who declined to give his name had sidled up to Adam and informed him that his wife had faked her first pregnancy, which had supposedly ended in a miscarriage. When an agonized Adam confronts Corinne with the story, she doesn’t deny it. Instead, she pleads for more time and promises that she’ll tell all over a restaurant dinner the following day. Adam, who’s clearly never read anything by Coben (Missing You, 2014, etc.), agrees, and Corinne checks out of her high school teaching job and vanishes, pausing just long enough to text Adam: “YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON’T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY.” Days pass, and it’s not OK. Adam’s two boys (are they really even his? should he run DNA tests?) keep asking where their mom is. There’s no word from Corinne, who won’t answer Adam’s texts. Her cellphone places her somewhere near Pittsburgh. Rumors about her start to percolate through the lacrosse league. And, although it’ll take Adam quite a while to find this out, a murder in far-off Ohio has implications for Corinne’s disappearance even more disturbing than anything Adam’s imagined.
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic throughout the twists. This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95350-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Like Jeffery Deaver, veteran Coben (Stay Close, 2012, etc.) is a magician who’s a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know...
Six years after the summer girlfriend he’s convinced is the love of his life throws him over to marry someone else, a shocking series of revelations draws a Massachusetts professor back to her.
“Promise me you’ll leave us alone,” Natalie Avery demanded of Jake Fisher after her wedding to surgeon Todd Sanderson. And for six years Jake’s done exactly that. But the news of Todd’s death rekindles his desire to see Natalie again. What could be the harm, now that she’s been widowed by the robbers who shot Todd to death? When he travels to their home in South Carolina, however, he walks into mystery and denial. Todd’s widow isn’t Natalie, but someone named Delia. Natalie’s sister Julie Pottham denies knowing anything about Jake. So do Cookie, the Kraftsboro Bookstore Café owner who served Jake and Natalie all those scones, and Rev. Kelly, who officiated at the wedding. In fact, there’s no record that Natalie and Todd were ever married at all. An anonymous email telling Jake, “You made a promise,” grieves Jake but doesn’t deter him from his search. Neither does a close encounter with a pair of killers who want to know where Natalie is and are certain Jake can tell them. Up till now, Jake’s nightmare is as infernally all-absorbing as Dr. David Beck’s in Tell No One (2001). But the discovery of a clue that begins to unravel the mystery also sends the tale spiraling past the bounds of plausibility, even for a thriller, until Jake’s quest for the truth entangles benevolent conspiracies, hired killers, multiple disappearances, the Mafia and all the people besides Natalie that Jake has held nearest and dearest.
Like Jeffery Deaver, veteran Coben (Stay Close, 2012, etc.) is a magician who’s a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know how he’s fooling you.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-525-95348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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