Don't Let Go

Starred review from July 31, 2017
New Jersey cop Nap Dumas, the hero of this outstanding standalone from bestseller Coben (Fool Me Once), is shocked to learn that fingerprints at the scene of a crime—the shooting death of a fellow cop and high school classmate during a traffic stop—belong to Maura Wells, Nap’s high school sweetheart, who disappeared 15 years earlier. Maura went missing at the same time that Nap’s twin, Leo, and Leo’s girlfriend, Diana Styles, were hit and killed by a train. Maura’s reappearance sends Nap to see Augie Styles, Diana’s father, a police captain and his mentor. Nap comes to suspect that the deaths of Leo and Diana may not have been an accident and are connected to a secret military base that they and a few other students called the Conspiracy Club were investigating at the time. When Nap begins tracking the surviving club members, it gradually becomes clear that someone or something is now trying to eliminate them. Coben keeps Nap and the reader blindly guessing as he peels back layers of deceit reaching back 15 years, revealing nesting dolls of deadly secrets. Five-city author tour. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency

August 1, 2017
A pair of present-day murders bring the past alive for a New Jersey cop still mourning the twin brother he buried 15 years ago.The last few weeks of high school often bring out the graduates' appetites for unaccustomed risky behavior. But no one in suburban Westbridge has ever been able to explain what Leo Dumas and his girlfriend, cheerleader Diana Styles, were doing on the railroad tracks that made them get hit by a train or why Maura Wells, the girlfriend of Leo's twin, Napoleon, "Nap," chose that night to disappear. Now, in one of those sudden lightning flashes only Coben (Home, 2016, etc.) could have thought of, that night comes roaring back with the discovery of Maura's fingerprints in a car driven by a murdered Pennsylvania cop. Sgt. Rex Canton was shot during what would have been a routine drunk-driving stop if Rex hadn't been off duty and specifically targeting the man who shot him. Detective Nap Dumas, who still regularly talks to his dead twin, knows he can't work an out-of-state homicide, even one that links Maura, his vanished girlfriend, once again to Rex, one of his high school classmates. In fact the connection is even deeper, for Leo, Diana, Maura, and Rex were all members of Westbrook High's Conspiracy Club, a group evidently designed to nurture the naturally anti-establishment paranoia of adolescents through the ages. When one of the club's two surviving members--Hank Stroud, a math genius who's been wandering the streets of Westbridge for years--is also murdered, Nap resolves to question the other survivor, Beth Lashley, who's now married, living in Ann Arbor, and practicing cardiology. He soon finds that Beth's resolve is equal to his own: she's separated from her husband, announced a professional sabbatical, and gone AWOL. What secret could the Conspiracy Club have discovered that would remain so dangerous for so long? Sadly, the answers are neither as interesting nor even as surprising as the setup. This may be the first time most of perennially bestselling Coben's readers will beat his hard-used hero to the solution.

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September 1, 2017
Coben, an internationally best-selling thriller and mystery writer and holder of a trifecta of U.S. crime-writing awards (the Edgar, the Agatha, and the Shamus), misfires in this stand-alone mix of suspense novel and detective story. As with just about every Coben novel, this one starts with a wow of an opening, in which a meeting in a bar quickly takes a devastating wrong turn. The plot then turns to suburban New Jersey cop Nap Dumas, who knew the victim and investigates the murder. Dumas is about 30, still living in his father's home, constantly brooding about the death of his twin brother and the break-up with his girlfriend within days of each other, 15 years ago. Coben uses the device of having Dumas write in the second person to his dead brother, and unfortunately, all the expository You will remember quickly become trite. And he writes in an arthritic, Chandleresque tough-guy style (a woman has a neckline so deep it could tutor philosophy ) that just doesn't fit a 30-year-old. The story itself sputters along on coincidence, rare for this master of plotting. For determined Coben fans.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Very few A-list crime writers can claim to have had 10 number-one New York Times best-sellers, but Coben can. His latest may be a misstep in many ways, but that won't stop the lines from forming to buy it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2017

Since he's the author of ten consecutive No. 1 New York Times best sellers and a winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards to boot, it would be nice to know plot details here. No such luck, but I can report that it's a stand-alone.

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