Caught

This is your basic Harlan Coben novel: something has happened in the distant past which comes back to bite multiple backsides in the present. We are in the suburbs, here, not uncommonly, in New Jersey (HC’s home). There are suspense elements, thriller elements, mystery elements and an extended ending which joins the loose ends and is nice and satisfying. In other words—part Jonathan Kellerman and (with the twists and turns at the end) part Jeffery Deaver. The plotting is masterful, even if the characterization is a little light. The book holds your interest and satisfies HC’s key purpose in writing—to tempt you to read a few pages late in the evening for a taste and then suddenly find yourself still awake at 5:00 in the morning, wondering what happened. In this case the featured character is an investigative TV reporter named Wendy Tynes. Wendy is a youngish widow with a son in high school, a motorcycle-riding father and a successful series on sexual offenders. Her life becomes entwined with a social worker and alleged sexual deviant named Dan Mercer. Dan went to Princeton (which, sorry HC, does not have a medical school) and has been experiencing some nasty reversals in his life, as have a group of his former classmates. Why? What happened in the past? And who is tormenting the Tigers now? This is classic HC, which is to say, highly engaging, highly entertaining, and just a tad implausible. The good news is that HC has built up an ensemble cast over the years. Legal shark Hester Crimstein plays a significant role here; Win Lockwood plays a smaller but still a pivotal role and we even pass the offices of our oldest HC friend, Myron Bolitar. This is not The Long Goodbye, The Big Sleep, or Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, but it is a great deal of fun. The difference is depth of theme, texture and overall weightiness, but HC is not trying to haunt your dreams and alter the shape of your aesthetic life. He is trying to entertain you and hold your attention. That he does masterfully.

What if the drunk driver who killed your spouse in a horrible accident persisted in sending you letters asking for forgiveness, could you forgive her? That's a question that TV news corespondent, Wendy Tynes, struggles with in Harlan Coben's new thriller, Caught. In fact, Forgiveness, in its purest form seems to be the crux of this absorbing mystery. In a scene near the beginning of the novel, after receiving many apologetic letters from her husband's killer -- Ariana Nasbro, now an alcoholic twelve stepper who has recently been released from prison -- Wendy confronts her at a half-way house about an hour from her home in Northern New Jersey: "So I'm here to tell you: Don't send me your self involved AA nonsense. I don't care. I don't want to forgive you so you can heal or recover or whatever the hell you call it...." Wendy hosts a newsmagazine style show called Caught in the Act, which exposes child sexual predators, live and in color, usually at a sting house where the internet chat room lurkers are lured. Her latest exposé ensnares Dan Mercer, a Big Brother type volunteer who coaches and councils troubled inner-city kids. Dan, a divorced Princeton grad, who was a foster child himself, is subsequently arrested and finds his life in ruins. The story jumps three months. Haley McWaid, a teenager and classmate of Wendy's son Charlie, has been missing since around the time of Mercer's arrest. The intermingling of these two unfortunate incidents is what drives the intricate plot of Coben's latest novel. Harlan Coben is basically a dual mode author. Firstly, he writes a series of private eye thrillers featuring Myron Bolitar, a sort of soft-boiled sports agent who finds himself enmeshed in all sorts of intrigue. And secondly, he writes the more socially conscious mysteries like Caught, which usually take place near his real life home of Ridgewood, New Jersey, a somewhat peaceful, wealthy suburban town, about an hour northwest of NYC. For the most part these New Jersey books are separate entities, but occasionally Coben will reintroduce his more dynamic characters like: Frank Tremont, a main character from his last NJ thriller, Hold Tight, and a minor player in Caught; Windsor Horne Lockwood III, a preppy business and computer whiz who is a childhood friend of Myron Bolitar as well as casual sex interest for reporter Tynes; and Hester Crimstein, a no-nonsense, risible, and caustic New York lawyer, one of my favorite recurring Coben characters. In Caught, Coben continues to engage his readers in thoughtful social commentary ripped from the morning headlines. The issue this time becomes modern day smear tactics i.e.; viral blogs, viral video, etc... How easy it is in the current technological climate, with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube, to spread the word, albeit slanderous, about anyone or anything. There are also subtexts that runs throughout many of the author's thrillers. In this book, one of the questions he tackles asks: how much trust do we give our kids and to what length are we willing to go to protect them? Wendy ponders these hypotheticals as she attends the regular meeting of Kasselton High School's Project Graduation, a gathering of parents scheming to make their kid's graduation experience as enjoyable and safe as possible. She peruses the various booths set up along the hallway: Not In Our House, a campaign against parents hosting underage drinking parties; another booth urged parents to post signs which proclaimed DRIVE SLOWLY WE *heart* OUR CHILDREN (as if you don't); Yet another kiosk handed out drinking pledge contracts, coaxing teens to swear an oath to never drink and drive. As she takes her seat, one of the fathers who sits next to her, gestures to the booths. "`Safety Overkill' he said. `We're so overprotective don't you think?' Wendy said nothing..." But later she wonders, "...if perhaps Ariana Nasbro's parents should have attended one of the over-the-top orientations, if maybe all this apparent safety overkill would indeed save a life during the next few weeks, so that some other family wouldn't have to deal with what she and Charlie had." The reader gets the feeling that Coben is frequently weaving his spin into the text, sometimes in a smart-alecky way, but always leaving room for the prevailing ethos. Throughout the book, Coben touches on everything from vigilantism to pseudo Rap music, adding humor in splotches here and there. All of it mixed with a suspenseful plot add up to a satisfying reading experience. Though for me, the essence of this novel returns to the source of Wendy's psychic pain; it's all about our capacity to forgive. [...] Book Jones 3.5 Stars

Hadn't read one of his books in a while and picked this up to break a bad streak of books that had made me miserable. It was a good move. Great read, with twisty, surprising plot twists. It starts with one of those TV reporter "stings" of a sexual predator and motors on from there. Three to four primary story lines that come together in a furious, crashing conclusion. HIghly recommended.

What a good author love his books looking forward to reading them all. Always a unexpected plot keeps you guessing

Very good read

Sehr spannend und flüssig geschrieben. Nichts ist schwarz-weiss, keiner nur boese, keiner ein Superheld (obwohl ich Superhelden auch mag). Ich wechsle gerne Autoren .. Jeffrey Archer, James Patterson, John Grisham, Jeff Abbott, usw. im Wechsel. Jetzt mache ich gleich mit Harlan Coben weiter und hoffe, dass er langfristig haelt, was er verspricht.

Não prende tanto a atenção. Mas vale para passar um tempo legal. Leitura rápida e sem muitas surpresas. Não vai ficar na memória, mas não foi um tempo desperdiçado também.

Typical Harlan Coben page turner. Got me hooked early on and kept me engaged