Tell No One

Before I read this book I'd heard that the ending was a bit odd and I've read advice to stop reading a few pages before the end which seemed like very very odd advice for a mystery. It's also impossible advice to follow. As I neared the end of this book I found myself thinking "Well that's not as bad an ending as I'd expected" and I just had one unresolved question that I wanted to read on and answer. But it's the answer to that unresolved question that's the weird thing at the end of the book,

Before I read this book I'd heard that the ending was a bit odd and I've read advice to stop reading a few pages before the end which seemed like very very odd advice for a mystery. It's also impossible advice to follow. As I neared the end of this book I found myself thinking "Well that's not as bad an ending as I'd expected" and I just had one unresolved question that I wanted to read on and answer. But it's the answer to that unresolved question that's the weird thing at the end of the book, the weirdness in the ending is entirely necessary to complete the plot, to stop reading before the final ending would be to cheat and have read an entirely different story. As you can tell, it's hard to explain this without explaining what the twist in the tale is which I'm trying not to do.

I'm torn between thinking the ending is bloody awful and thinking that it's very clever, I'm not sure if I'll make my mind up. It might be one of those things where I just have to accept that it's both extremes together.

This story is mixture of mystery and suspense and concerns Dr David Beck (an unfortunate moniker on the right side of the Atlantic since it's hard to read the book without picturing the English footballer David Beckham and it's also hard to imagine David Beckham as a paediatrician) who gets sent an anonymous email to tune into a webcam at a certain time. When he looks at the webcam he sees his wife walk by - she died eight years before.

The narrative switches between a first person view and the odd section of third person view. In the beginning of the book these viewpoints are kept in separate chapters but as the book goes on they begin to flip back and forth more often and for shorter periods of time. I don't have a huge problem with this device other than finding it a bit weird to have a first person narrator and yet to know more than him. On the whole it added to the suspense for the reader to have greater omniscience. It did get confusing in parts where it wasn't immediately clear to me at the start of a section which viewpoint we had.

There's a ton of technological bits in this book, lots of email, web stuff, digital imaging etc. I can't help but wonder if Coben was planning on selling the film rights to this when he wrote it. My feeling is that it will make a better film than it does a book. The twist at the end would make you leave a cinema thinking whereas it makes you close the book shrugging.

On the whole it's a good book if the ending doesn't throw you too much, and you don't let the prospect of a bit of bizarre stuff put you off the rest of the book. It feels like it was written both for the screen and to move Harlan Coben off the mystery shelves and onto the bestseller racks at airports. I can hardly blame Coben for wanting to make his fortune and he's a lot better writer than many who feature on those bestseller racks.

[p.s. it looks like this will indeed become a film.]

David Beck has rebuilt his life since his wife's murder eight years ago, finishing medical school and establishing himself as a pediatrician, but he's never forgotten the woman he fell in love with in second grade. And when a mysterious e-mail arrives on the anniversary of their first kiss, with a message and an image that leads him to wonder whether Elizabeth might still be alive, Beck will stop at nothing to find the truth that's eluded him for so many years. A powerful bill

David Beck has rebuilt his life since his wife's murder eight years ago, finishing medical school and establishing himself as a pediatrician, but he's never forgotten the woman he fell in love with in second grade. And when a mysterious e-mail arrives on the anniversary of their first kiss, with a message and an image that leads him to wonder whether Elizabeth might still be alive, Beck will stop at nothing to find the truth that's eluded him for so many years. A powerful billionaire is equally determined to make sure his role in her disappearance never comes to light, even if it means destroying an innocent man.

In David Beck, Harlan Coben, the author of the popular series starring sports agent Myron Bolitar (__ et al.) has created a protagonist who shares many of Bolitar's best qualities--he's a decent, generous, gentle guy whose loyalty to those he loves is unquestionable. So when he discovers that people he was close to may be responsible not only for Elizabeth's murder but also the "accidental" death of his father, Beck's sense of betrayal is as understandable to the reader as his uncharacteristically violent reaction. Coben is a skillful storyteller with a gift for creating likable characters caught up in circumstances that illuminate their complex emotional lives and deep humanity. This should be the thriller that breaks this talented writer out of the mystery genre and earns him the recognition he deserves. --Jane Adams

Every writer likes to stretch his legs, and here Coben, author of seven acclaimed Myron Bolitar mysteries (Darkest Fear, etc.), stretches his. He doesn't quite kick his reputation aside in the process. This thriller, Coben's first non-Bolitar novel, is a breezy enough read, but it's not up to snuff. It's got a nifty setup, though. David Beck and Elizabeth Parker, just-married childhood sweethearts, are vacationing at the Beck family retreat when Beck is knocked unconscious and Elizabeth is kidnapped. Cut to eight years later: Beck is a young physician working with ghetto kids in Manhattan, and Elizabeth, we learn, is dead, victim of a serial killer known as KillRoy. Or is she? For immediately after two bodies eight years old are uncovered on the Beck land, Beck receives a series of e-mails apparently from Elizabeth. His frantic search to find out if she lives dovetails with the equally frenzied efforts of cops to pin Elizabeth's murder on Beck, as well as the antic moves of a mysterious billionaire an old friend of the Beck family and his two hired thugs to frame Beck for that murder. Beck finds himself a man on the run from the cops his only ally a black drug dealer whose child he's treating for hemophilia caught in an overcomplicated tangle of lies and vengeance. Coben knows how to move pages, and he generates considerable suspense, but there's little new here. The narrative style is cloned from James Patterson, alternating first-person with third. The villains, particularly the billionaire and a Chinese martial artist, are as old as mid-Elmore Leonard or even Chandler. The black drug dealer isn't a character, he's a plot device, and the climax packs the emotional wallop of a strong episode of The Rockford Files. (June 19)Forecast: Heavy-hitting blurbs from Jeffery Deaver and Phillip Margolin, among others, indicate more about the solidarity of the mystery community than about this book's excellence, but should attract browsers. The publisher will pitch this as a summer beach read, and it's not a bad one. In fact, it may outsell Coben's mysteries, despite its flaws.

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