Tell No One door Harlan Coben

Tell no one - Harlan Coben

1. Author

 Harlan Coben is a celebrated name in American contemporary fiction. He is famous for his thriller and mystery novels. His last seven novels consecutively stood no. 1 on New York Times bestselling list. Harlan Coben was born on 4th of January, 1962 in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in a Jewish family. He received his education from Livingston High School in New Jersey where he became friends with Chris Christie, a future politician. He majored in political science from Amherst College. Here he met a future author Dan Brown while he served as a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity with him. In fact, he also began his writing in his college years. On completion of his graduation he joined a travelling agency owned by his grandfather. He now resides in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and four children.

1. Summary

Dr. David Beck is a pediatrician in New York. His wife tragically died eight years earlier, in a somewhat mysterious event. He has never remarried and has thrown his life into his practice. One day he gets a mysterious e-mail with cryptic clues that only his wife and he understand. Is this email from her ghost? At first he dismisses it until he gets another email with even more clues that only he and she could know. He tells his best friend Shanna about it, swearing her not to tell anyone, since that is what the sender of the e-mail said. He starts to wonder if his wife really died that night at the camp, or if for some reason her death was faked. The night after he talks to his wife's former friend Rebecca, she is killed. Did she know something that someone shut her up to keep secret? Unfortunately Beck was the last one seen with her and the obvious suspect. But in order to keep from being arrested, Beck runs from his office because he needs to meet with the sender of the e-mails at five p.m. He will do anything to find out if his wife is really alive or if it is all a hoax.

1. Opinion

 I had never read anything by Harlan Coben and I had heard of my friends that “Tell no one” was a good book. When I searched it on the internet, Coben's books seemed popular, so I thought I'd give it a try. I disagree with all the good reviews. This book was horrible, but I'll admit, it was a page turner. However, all along, I noticed the bad writing (difficult descriptions), the improbable plot twists which never seemed to end (it was very difficult to follow the story), and the completely contrived situations to help set up those plot twists. For example, having Dr. Beck take care of and befriend a black thug drug dealer's son only so that this same black thug could be his back up man later on? That was very predictable and so lame. Then the whole idea of his wife's disappearance being turned on its head just did not seem realistic. If they were so in love and so in tune, I just don't think it would have happened the way it did... that she'd hide all this from him. And more kept getting revealed to switch everything around up till the very last page!

It was as if Coben was paranoid that not enough excitement existed in the book so he had to keep throwing stuff at the book, but it was too much for me.

“Hi, Rebecca”

“Son of a gun. How are you Beck?”

“Good. About yourself?”

…

Fifty percent of the book are conversations, what is sometimes hard to follow when it lasts a whole page.