Harlan Coben

GONE BEFORE GOODBYE . . . Between the covers

Maggie McCabe is – or was – an internationally renowned reconstructive surgeon, who used her skills as a volunteer in some of the worst hell holes on earth, like Libya during its extended civil war. Then, everything went pear-shaped. Traumatised by stress and grief, she took to stabilising herself with pills. Then, one day, she took too many of the wrong kind, botched a surgical procedure, and found herself at the wrong end of a malpractice claim. Now, stony broke and shunned by former colleagues she is offered a job to operate on a reclusive Russian oligarch. All her debts will be cancelled. The malpractice suit will mysteriously disappear.

All too good to be true? Of course it is, but then this is mainstream American crime fiction, where almost anything can happen – and usually does. The novel is the kind of celebrity partnership which makes publicists become dewy-eyed, and makes hard working ‘proper’ novelists apoplectic with a blend of rage and envy. I don’t ‘do’ much mainstream film or TV, so while the name Reese Witherspoon was vaguely on the edge of my consciousness, I had little idea who she was or what she has done. In contrast, I have read many Harlan Coven novels and, with the proviso that they have all had that typical transatlantic slickness, I have found them readable and entertaining. As with most writing collaborations, who wrote what is not immediately obvious, but is the book any good?

Short answer is yes, it is improbably entertaining. You will need, if course, to leave any residual sense of disbelief with the cloak room attendant before you enter this particular literary room. We have ‘griefbots’, totally life-like AI reconstructions of a deceased loved one that can be installed on your ‘phone, and with whom you can chat any time you want; we have a Russian monster do powerful that he can recreate Maggie McCabe’s own operating theatre in an annexe of his winter palace, complete with instrument trays in precisely the same position as she is used to; we have the self same gentleman who has multiple ‘genuine’ copies of the Mona Lisa, one of which was actually painted by LdV himself. Oh I almost forgot. The Russian big shot hosts a gala ball, with a stage set up for a world megastar to perform. The star? None other than Watford’s finest, Sir Reginald Kenneth Dwight (if you know, you know)

Maggie turns in before EJ can sing Rocket Man. She has two surgical procedures to complete the next day – a facelift on the oligarch, a breast augmentation on his girlfriend – and she needs sleep. The surgery goes as planned, but then things begin to unravel. Maggie survives being disposed of (by being tipped out of a helicopter into the bottomless chasm of a disused mine) and ends up (don’t ask) being taken to Dubai by of former physician-turned-CIA-agent.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Maggie’s biker father in law, known as Porkchop, is on the case, and he is a man to be reckoned with. Dubai is, naturally, a whirlwind of opulence, subtly concealed violence – and a mixture of revelation and mystery for Maggie. She has a brief and scary reunion with her Russian oligarch – Oleg Ragorsvich – and learns that his recently enhanced girlfriend – Nadia – is not who she appears to be. Then, via London, Paris and Bordeaux’s Gare Saint Jean (and an escort of French bikers) she and Porkchop are on their way to a former vineyard where all is about to be revealed.

What we have is fantasy, total escapism, utter implausibility – and first rate entertainment. Gone Before Goodbye will be published by Century on 25th October. You can read my reviews of other Harlan Coben novels by clicking the author image (above{

October 21, 2025 0

NOBODY’S FOOL . . . Between the covers

In the last Harlan Coben book I read, Think Twice, the DNA of a man who died decades ago turns up at a recent murder scene. Coben loves these ‘impossible’ scenarios, and here, he sets us another one. When he was on a gap year trip to Europe twenty-two years earlier, Sami Kierce had a passionate fling in a Spanish resort with a young fellow American called Anna. It all ended grimly when, after yet another evening fueled by booze, drugs and sex, Sami wakes, as usual, in Anna’s arms. Problem. He is covered in Anna’s blood and clutching a knife.

Now, Sami, thrown off the police force for various indiscretions, scratches a living as a PI in New York, also turning a more-or-less honest buck giving evening classes in criminology to a bunch of weirdos. When one of his classes is joined by a woman who, if not Anna is, surely, a clone, Sami does a classic double-take. So many questions, already. First up is how Sami managed to get back Stateside after the Costa del Sol incident with Anna. We do find out, eventually. Second is how ‘Anna’ appears to be living in a Connecticut mansion, deep in a forest and protected by armed heavies and belligerent dogs.

As if having one dramatic backstory weren’t enough, Sami has two. Before he had to throw in his badge, Sami was engaged to a fellow officer, Nicole Brett. Then she was murdered by a nasty piece of work called Tad Grayson, who was arrested, tried, and given a life term. But now, thanks to nifty footwork by his legal team, Grayson is out, and determined to prove that he did not kill Nicole. All of which, naturally enough, does not improve Sami’s sunny demeanour. ‘Anna’ is actually Victoria Belmond who, back in the day featured in the mother-and-father of all ‘missing heiress’ stories. Victoria disappeared on New Years Eve after a party, and what happened in the next eleven years – until she turned up sitting in a corner booth of a Maine diner – remains a mystery. Victoria was – literally – mute for many months thereafter and even, when speech returned, remembered nothing of where she had been and with whom.

After his abortive attempt to follow ‘Anna‘ on the night she came to his class, Sami has become a person of interest to the Belmond family and, much to his surprise, he is offered a small fortune to do what the police and FBI failed to do – discover the truth about Victoria’s disappearance. He even uses the Belmond’s largesse to take a quick trip to Spain along with wife Molly and their baby son, and here he finds the police officer who dealt with the case back in the day. He learns that he was the victim of a very clever scam involving ‘Anna’ and her drug hustling boyfriend.

Just when this particular reader was reflecting that this was just one more engaging – but slick and formulaic – American thriller, something truly awful happens and, 308 pages out of 414, everything I thought I understood about the plot is turned on its head. Reviewers are forever trying to think up new metaphors and catchy phrases to explain astonishing plot twists, so all I can say is that this one is up there with the best. I can also say that in the hands of a lesser writer that Harlan Coben, it would probably be a disaster, but he pulls it off with his customary flair. Nobody’s Fool was published by Penguin on 27th March.

March 26, 2025 0

THINK TWICE . . . Between the covers

A bit of back story. Myron Bolitar (read my review of an earlier book in the series HERE) is a New York sports agent who, before a career-ending knee injury, was a top basketball player. One of his bitterest rivals on the court – and in romance – was Greg Downing. Bolitar went on to become his agent, but not before impregnating Downing’s soon-to-be wife Emily, a young woman they had fought over. The resultant child, Jeremy, now a serving soldier, was brought up to be the Downings’ son. Citing psychological problems, Downing retired from sport, and went to the Far East to “find himself”. He never returned, but his death was announced, and his ashes returned to the USA. Bolitar, being a decent man and putting past grievances to one side, gave the eulogy at his memorial service.

Understandably, Bolitar’s jaw drops when two FBI agents enter his office, and tell him that Downing’s DNA has been found at a recent murder scene. We know from the very start of the book that someone is very good at committing murder and putting someone else in the frame by acquiring their DNA via, say, a hairbrush or a used tissue, and leaving it at the scene of the crime. To say more would be to spoil the fun, but all I will say is that readers should not make assumptions. Across New York and its suburbs, people are looking at serious jail time for crimes we know they didn’t commit but, strangely, as well as irrefutable forensic traces, the suspects have motive, too. Like the young woman who worked a building contract with her father, for a big developer. When that developer simply refused to pay them, citing shoddy workmanship, was she finally driven to desperation, borrowed her father’s rifle and shot the crooked developer dead?

Many fictional American investigators have a brutal sidekick who can be relied upon to dish out extreme violence from time to time. Robert B Parker’s Spenser had Hawk, John Connolly’s Charlie Parker has Louis, and Myron Bolitar has Windsor Horne Lockwood III, a billionaire playboy who loves guns – and using them. Here, he rescues Bolitar from having a toe removed by mobsters, and plays an important part at the end of the book. The relationship between Win and Myron is complex. Win is borderline psychotic, and he does things which, in his mind, are for the good, while knowing full well that Myron would not conscience such behaviour. He doesn’t utter the words, but he is thinking, “I will do this so you don’t have to.”

The plot becomes more complex page by page, and I trust it is not a spoiler to say that Greg Downing is very much alive and well. What neither Bolitar, Win, Emily, Jeremy nor we readers know is why Downing faked his death and – most importantly – with whom. The FBI involvement develops far beyond the two agents we met at the beginning of the novel, and heads right to the core leadership of the agency, but all the while, the pieces of the puzzle stubbornly refuse to fit together, until Coben creates a tense and violent conclusion played out – of all places – under the gloomy Gothic shadow of the Dakota Building on the edge of Central Park, while a busker does his unknowingly ironic stuff with John Lennon’s Imagine.

The book is trademark Harlen Coben – razor sharp East Coast dialogue, relentlessly entertaining, witty, and with enough violence to keep noir fans satisfied. The back cover blurb describes the author as a ‘Global Entertainment Brand.’ I am a bit old fashioned, and would much rather think of him as an immensely talented writer. Think Twice is published by Century and will be out on 23rd May.

May 17, 2024 0

I WILL FIND YOU . . . Between the covers

Sometimes, the best writers set themselves challenges by posing a plot problem that appears to deny a plausible solution. One such was back in 2021 when, in The Perfect Lie, Jo Spain pulled the wool over our eyes. There, the deception hinged on a few words – and our (wrong) assumptions.

https://fullybooked2017.com/2021/05/13/the-perfect-lie-between-the-covers/

In his latest novel, Harlan Coben – to use the metaphor of Houdini – has wrapped himself in so many chains and padlocks that it seems impossible that he can set himself free. Why? Try this. Five years ago, David Burroughs was jailed for life for murdering his three year-old son, Matthew, with a baseball bat. He now languishes in the protected section of a high security jail, alongside child rapists, cannibals, and other monsters. After refusing to see any visitors for five years he is finally forced to see one – because he omitted to fill in the annual paperwork. It is his former sister-in-law Rachel; his wife, Cheryl has, inevitably, divorced him. Rachel shows David a photo (taken by a friend) of a family group at an amusement park. On the edge of the picture is a little boy, clutching the hand of an adult, otherwise out of picture. It is Matthew.

Coben gives us a drive-through account of the back story. David Burroughs was home-alone with Matthew that night. Cheryl, a surgeon, was at work. David was in a bad mood, put his son to bed without a bedtime story, and proceeded to get outside of the best part of a bottle of Bourbon. Somehow awakened by a sixth sense that something was wrong, or perhaps by the smell of blood, David staggered to his son’s bedroom only to find a mangled and unrecognisable corpse on the bed.

The first key to the mystery is, of course, that the shattered boy’s corpse was just that – unrecognisable. It was, however, in Matthew’s bed, wearing Matthew’s pyjamas. When, a little while later a baseball bat, with David’s fingerprints all over it, is found buried in the garden, David’s status changes from bereaved father, through suspect, to convicted killer.

The next key has to be putting David in a situation – i.e. no longer behind bars – where he can investigate the possibility that the child in the photograph is Matthew, and prove that the murdered boy in Matthew’s bed was someone else. The Governor of Briggs Penitentiary is Philip Mackenzie, and he has history with David Burroughs. David’s dad, Lenny, was, long ago, a grunt in Vietnam with Phil. The pair survived and went on to become partners in crime prevention as precinct cops. Now, Phil is just months away from retirement and a double pension, while Lenny is in the advanced stages of dementia. Suffice it to say there is a fairly improbable break-out from Briggs but this is, after all, crime-fiction.

Coben then throws a fairly heavy spanner into the works by revealing that at a rough stage in their marriage, when Cheryl and David were unable to conceive, Cheryl booked an appointment at a sperm donor clinic. This cleverly opens up all manner of potential twists and questions, which the author exploits to the maximum. It certainly had me guessing right up to the final few pages. If I say this a typically American slick thriller, it is meant as an entirely positive description. Somehow – and I won’t say they are better than British writers – American novelists such as Coben, Connolly, Baldacci and Kellerman produce a polished and gleaming product which has, to extend the automobile metaphor, a distinctive ‘new car smell’. I Will Find You is published by Century and is out now.

April 10, 2023 0

ON MY SHELF . . . March 2023

I WILL FIND YOU by Harlan Coben

It’s the mark of a fine crime writer that they can produce excellent series (in this case my favourite is those books featuring Myron Bolitar) but also create standalone novels, such as this one. Five years ago, David Burroughs began a life sentence for murdering his son Matthew. Burroughs, wrongly accused and convicted of the murder is rotting away in a maximum-security prison. The world has moved on without him. Then his sister in law, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a holiday shot of a busy amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, is a boy bearing an uncanny resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive. Shaken out of his institutional depression, David plans to escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. From Grand Central Publishing, this is out now. Click the link below for the Amazon page:

EVERYONE HERE IS LYING by Shari Lapena

Back in 2020 I was thoroughly gripped by Shari Lapena’s The End of Her and I remember using the term ‘anxiety porn’. It looks as if there is more of the same here.Welcome to Stanhope is regarded as a safe neighbourhood, and a place for families to live out the American Dream. William Wooler should fit right in there, at least on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ends horribly one afternoon at a motel up the road. He returns to his house, devastated and angry, only to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery home from school unexpectedly. William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery’s family declare her missing. Suddenly Stanhope’s reputation as being a suburban idyll takes a sever hit. William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, the neighbourly and trusting atmosphere starts to fragment, and then disintegrates completely. Everyone Is Lying is published by Bantam and will be available in July.

NO ONE SAW A THING by Andrea Mara

Dublin author Andrea Mara certainly has a thing for those awful parental moments when you think your child may have gone missing. She takes things one stage further here with a chilling account of an apparent abduction. A woman stands on a crowded tube platform in London. Her two little girls jump on the train ahead of her. As she tries to join them, the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving her behind. By the time she gets to the next stop, she has convinced herself that everything will be fine. But she soon starts to panic, because there aren’t two children waiting for her on the platform. There’s only one.Has her other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger? Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than she thinks? No one is telling the truth, and the longer the search continues, the harder the missing child will be to find. Out in May, this is published by Bantam.

THE TRAP by Catharine Ryan Howard

There seems to be an abundance of fine women crime writers from Ireland at the moment, but they aren’t all from Dublin. It’s a long time since I read a novel by Cork-based author Catherine Ryan Howard but, inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances, The Trap looks to be a winner.A young woman uses herself as bait to try to track down the man who took her sister. The blurb says:

“Stranded on a dark road in the middle of the night, a young woman accepts a lift from a passing stranger. It’s the nightmare scenario that every girl is warned about, and she knows the dangers all too well – but what other choice does she have? As they drive, she alternates between fear and relief – one moment thinking he is just a good man doing a good thing, the next convinced he’s a monster. But when he delivers her safely to her destination, she realizes her fears were unfounded. And her heart sinks. Because a monster is what she’s looking for.”

Published by Bantam, The Trap will be out in August

THE LAST SONGBIRD by Daniel Weizman

Back to America for the final novel in this selection, and we are in California. A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and he picks up Annie Linden – a fabled 1970s music icon. During that initial ride, the two quickly strike a bond, and over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver and Annie listens to his music, encouraging Adam even as he finds himself driving more often than songwriting. When Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier – a heartbroken Adam plays detective, only for the cops to believe he was somehow responsible. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music , Adam digs into Annie’s past. As he spends his days driving around the labyrinth of LA highways, Adam comes to question how well he, or anyone else, knew Annie – if at all. This is published by Melville House and will be out in May.

March 20, 2023 1

THE BOY FROM THE WOODS . . . Between the covers

Harlan Coben’s ability to write gripping stand-alone crime thrillers is little short of astonishing. Yes, we loved his character series featuring Myron Bolitar and then the three novels centred on his nephew Mickey, but here’s the thing. In The Boy From The Woods he introduces us to a couple of characters right out of the blue, as it were, but after just a few pages we feel that we have known them for ever. We might resolve to catch up on the previous books in the series, but then we remember there are none. This is our first acquaintance with the enigmatic young man known only as Wilde, and his hotshot lawyer friend Hester Crimstein.

So, who is Wilde? No-one knows his real name. He was rescued (if that’s the right word) as a child, after living alone and by his own wits in remote woods not far from New York City. How he got there, no-one in authority knows, and if he does, he isn’t telling. Subsequently fostered, he then went on to have a distinguished career in the special forces, and he now earns a living as a security consultant.

Hester? She is a delightfully sharp Jewish lawyer with a laser mind and a tongue as keen as a Damascus knife.Widowed some years earlier when husband David died in a car crash, she defends high profile clients as well as being the central attraction in a reality TV show featuring legal cases.

Naomi Pine, a socially awkward teenage girl who is the subject of relentless bullying at school, goes missing. Is it foul play, or is it somehow connected with Naomi’s relationship with Crash Maynard, the silver-spoon son of Dash Maynard, a millionaire TV producer who is connected to all that is good, bad and ugly about East Coast politics.

The plot of The Boy From The Woods is complex and intriguing. While Wilde and Hester try to find out why Naomi has disappeared and where she is, there is another plot strand involving Rusty Eggers a rich and ambitious politician whose bid for power may be derailed by old #meetoo tapes held by Dash Maynard.

One of the cover blurbs for The Boy From The Woods says “Coben never, ever lets you down.” Many such claims these days are just spin, but this one is totally correct. The book is published by Century and is out now. For more Fully Booked features and reviews of Harlan Coben’s books, click the image below.

March 21, 2020 0

RUNAWAY . . . Between the covers

This gripping thriller opens in New York’s Central Park. To be more precise, in Strawberry Fields, the section of the public space dedicated – perhaps by a city with an uneasy sense of guilt about providing the stage for the most infamous music death of all – to the man who took five hollow-point .38 bullets in his back, just across the way on 8^th December 1980. Simon Greene, a wealthy investment advisor, sits on a bench listening to a busker, also committing murder (but this time the victim is only a song, All You Need Is Love)

“Simon’s eyes stayed locked on the panhandling girl mangling John Lennon’s legacy. Her hair was matted clumps. Her cheekbones were sunken. The girl was rail-thin, raggedy, dirty, damaged, homeless, lost.

She was also Simon’s daughter Paige.”

Start a 366 page book like that, and you might be making a rod for your own back, one that will whack you squarely between the shoulder blades if you don’t keep up the poetic intensity. Does Coben manage it? Of course he does – and with the stylish flourishes and narrative élan we have come to expect from one of the great crime writers of out time.

Simon Greene tries to embrace his fallen daughter, both literally and metaphorically, and he meets not only rejection but is sucked into a vortex of desperation and violence as he defies the good advice of his family, and tries to bring Paige home. Greene has three weapons: first, a borrowed handgun he has no idea how to use; second, a relatively inexhaustible supply of cash with which to bribe the grifters who he believes can lead him to his daughter; thirdly – and perhaps the most potent – a desperate desire to reclaim his ‘little girl’ and, perhaps, assuage the inevitable feelings of guilt any parent must feel when a child goes badly astray.

Pitting a mild-mannered financial advisor against a violent underclass of drug dealers and abusers might seem an obvious ploy, but Coben turns the narrative on its head by introducing another element into Simon Greene’s quest. Think Heart of Darkness, and imagine Greene as Conrad’s Marlow, but be prepared for the elusive Kurtz to be someone – and something – way, way different and far more disturbing and dangerous.

Harlan Coben (right) has thirty or so best selling crime thrillers behind him, but we must never, ever, take him for granted. There is no formula, no template, and no literary flat-pack easy-to-assemble ‘give-the-audience-what-it-wants’ sameness. He takes us to uncomfortable places and introduces us to people who are not stereotype heroes or villains. He is unafraid to give us a rough ride along roads traveled by complicated people who frequently confound our perceptions. Runaway is, quite simply, a brilliant read. It is published by Century and will be out in Kindle and hardback on 21^st March. The paperback version is expected in the summer. You can check out other Fully Booked reviews of Harlan Coben’s novels by clicking the links below.

Don’t Let Go

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February 25, 2019 0

ON MY SHELF . . . Late January 2019

The TBR pile is beginning to look menacing, but that’s fine. It’s January. It’s bleak outside. The rain sluices against the window panes. The central heating is working a treat, so all is good. How do I find the time? It’s called being retired, and I can thoroughly recommend it. So, in alphabetical order of author, here we go.

RUN AWAY by Harlan Coben

One of the more reliable tropes in crime fiction, and one that never fails to hit a nerve, is the one about the father whose daughter is taken from him by fate, circumstance or – memorably in the case of Bryan Mills/Liam Neeson – by the bad guys. In this case, however, Simon Greene has lost his daughter to a more complex enemy – drugs, disenchantment and mental instability. Greene’s wife has had enough of the wayward Paige and has shut her out of her life, but Greene never stops looking. And then he finds her. Emaciated, filthy, and addicted. His determination to follow her down into her own private hell and bring her back is a terrifying journey through New York’ dark side, and a stark portrait of human obsession. Century will be publishing Run Away on 21st March, and there’s plenty to read about Harlan Coben on the Fully Booked website

TOO CLOSE by Natalie Daniels

Natalie Daniels is the pseudonym for screenwriter, author and actress Clara Salaman who starred as DS Claire Stanton in the long running British TV cop show The Bill. Her talent as a writer is on display here in a psychological drama about a woman who wakes up in a secure mental hospital, her hair torn out in clumps, emaciated and with no memory of how she got there. What is the connection between Connie’s present state and the friendly lady she met in the park watching their children play? Can psychiatrist Emma Robinson untangle the twisted knots that make up Connie’s memory, and come anywhere near to rationalising what Connie has done? Transworld Digital brought out Too Close in November 2018 as a Kindle, but people who like to get their hands on the printed page can get a paperback version on 7th March.

THE PASSENGERS by John Marrs

If you are long in the tooth and a bit ‘old school’ like me, you may well share my bafflement at the concept of driverless cars. It will all end in tears, I say, and this entertaining mixture of crime fiction and SciFi may add weight to my argument. Eight driverless cars set off on their separate journeys. The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife – and parents of two who are travelling in separate vehicles – and a suicidal man. What could possibly go wrong? Someone hacking into the IT system which controls these vehicles is precisely what goes wrong, with predictably disastrous consequences. Marrs is the author of best sellers The One, The Good Samaritan, When You Disappeared, Welcome to Wherever You Are and Her Last Move. The Passengers will be out in Kindle on 1st April, and there will be a paperback version from Del Rey at the end of May.

TAKEN by Tony Parsons

There are few modern writers who know London as well as Tony Parsons, and his intrepid London copper Max Wolfe gets to explore the many nooks and crannies, foibles, eccentricities – and dark places – of England’s capital in the course of his investigations. When a gangland revenge kidnapping goes spectacularly wrong, Wolfe is drawn into the nightmare world of London’s underbelly, and he is pitted against men for whom power, money, sex and horrific violence are simply tools of their trade. I am a huge fan of Tony Parsons and his Max Wolfe novels, so while you wait for Taken to appear – on 18th April – check out my reviews of Die Last and Girl On Fire.

NO ONE YOU KNOW by Michelle Richmond

Ellie Enderlin’s life has been blighted by the unsolved murder of her sister. Lila’s death cast its black shadow over her parents, too, but when Ellie finds her sisters notebook what she reads opens up the possibility that Lila’s killer may, at last, be identified. Knowledge, however, rarely comes without a price, and as Ellie reconstructs her sister’s life – and death – she comes to realise that when heavy stones are lifted, there may be unpleasant things scuttling around underneath. Set in San Francisco, this first came out in 2008, and second hand copies can be picked up fairly easily, but this is a brand new paperback reissue, and is out now,

KARIM, KING OF ENGLAND by Baz Wade

This is a futuristic political thriller which takes as its subtext the anxieties many British people share about the rise and rise of Islam in the commercial, educational and social life of the country. Readers will not need subtitles to recognise the real-life palimpsest of this story, where a dazzling English princess bears a child whose father is a wealthy middle-eastern playboy. Karim is that child, and when he returns to England after a Muslim upbringing in Dubai, he becomes involved in a political and social struggle which threatens to engulf the country, and turn his golden dreams into ashes. Karim, King Of England came out late last year and is readily available.

January 28, 2019 0

BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 … Best thriller

What constitutes a thriller? I suppose that could be one of those ‘how long is a piece of string questions’. I would hope that any crime novel worth its salt would be ‘thrilling’ in some shape or form, but for the sake of clarity, I’m excluding books which rely heavily for their impact on police investigations, or are given added ambience by an historical setting. So, what did I enjoy? Harlan Coben always delivers, and his renegade policeman Napoleon ‘Nap’ Dumas left official procedural behind and certainly did the business in Don’t Let Go. Domestic Noir has become a very fruitful field for many authors and publishers, and I enjoyed having the wool pulled over my eyes by Simon Lelic in The House.

Another writer who kept one or two brilliant tricks up his sleeve was Tim Weaver when he gave us another mystery for David Raker to solve in I Am Missing. Michael Robotham played the ‘unreliable narrator’ trick when he challenged us to decide just which of the expectant mums was telling the truth in The Secrets She Keeps, while Karen Perry dangled several versions of the truth in front of us in a brilliant tale about memory, old friendships and illusion in Can You Keep A Secret?

So, who thrilled me the most? First across the line by a nose, in a very competitive field, was Unleashed, by Peter Laws. Laws sends his alter ego, Professor Matt Hunter, to the dull south London suburb of Menham to investigate a Hieronymus Bosch-like scene at a primary school concert, where the highlight of the evening is the music teacher being found dead in a cupboard full of recorders, plastic tambourines and chime bars – with her throat ripped out, apparently by her own pet dog. Hunter’s investigations lead him to to 29 Barley Street, where a young girl was found hanging from a beam in her bedroom. The soul of Holly Watson, however, is not at rest, and her presence still lingers in the claustrophobic gloom of her home. Occasionally – and unashamedly – playing to the gallery, and using every colour on his palette, Laws paints a picture that disquiets us. He makes us think to ourselves, “This is nonsense, but …..” The ‘but’ is his key weapon. He evokes old fears, conjure up ancient and deep-rooted uncertainties – and makes us glad that Unleashed is only a book.

My verdict?

“Laws takes a leaf out of the book of the master of atmospheric and haunted landscapes, M R James. The drab suburban topography of Menham comes alive with all manner of dark interventions; we jump as a wayward tree branch scrapes like a dead hand across a gazebo roof; we recoil in fear as a white muslin curtain forms itself into something unspeakable; dead things scuttle and scrabble about in dark corners while, in our peripheral vision, shapes form themselves into dreadful spectres. When we turn our heads, however, there is nothing there but our own imagination.”