How can a morose man's long-ago-murdered wife, whose mutilated body was found in a ditch and identified by close relatives, mysteriously return to life eight years later? Proving that anything's possible in fiction, such a scenario drives Harlan Coben's improbable, but well-written, novel, Tell No One (2002, Bantam Dell, 370 pages).
Dr David Beck never recovered from losing his wife Elizabeth. Maybe he never could. “Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.”
Worse, Beck blames himself that a serial killer snatched Elizabeth on a dark night at an isolated lake. He tried to save her, but failed, thumped unconscious with a baseball bat.
A mysterious, untraceable email, with phrases that could come only from Elizabeth, leads him to believe that miraculously she's alive. But how could that be true? Where has she been for so long? Why does she caution him to “tell no one”?
Sinister forces ripple. Powerful men hold secrets they will kill to protect. Beck knows only enough to fumble about, deeply confused. Suddenly, corpses begin to appear? Planted evidence makes Beck a suspect, and he must flee the double peril of shortsighted police and brutal assassins.
“I dove down an alleyway – that was what they always do on TV – but it dead-ended into a group of the foulest Dumpsters on the planet. The stench made me draw up like a horse…. I heard voices. The cops were coming closer. I was totally exposed. I flattened myself closer to the wall, like that would help. Like they might turn the corner and mistake me for a mural.”
Leading a chase takes the frantic doctor deep into unfamiliar territory. “The area was ugly as all hell, like one of those scenes you see in apocalyptic movies after the bomb detonates. There were patches of what might have once been buildings, all in various states of decay. Structures had crumbled, yes, but as through from within, as though the supporting innards had been eaten away.”
The unlikely storyline works because Coben enthralls by routinely stringing together words that instantly, magically, create vivid images:
“Pigeons waddled with the type of possessiveness usually associated with politicians.”
“The two men in suits leaned against a big brown Buick. Physical opposites. One was tall and thin and white, the other short and round and black; together they looked a little like a bowling ball trying to knock down the last pin.”
“The receptionist wore a hideous wig and looked at us as though we'd just plopped out of a dog's behind.”
“The stifling heat was of the blast furnace variety. Human beings – maybe fifty of them, maybe a hundred – littered the floor like losing stubs at an OTB.”
Despite ample talent, Coben is prone to careless miscues. For example, one sinister character, Eric Wu, “a 26-year-old Korean with a staggering assortment of body pierces and tattoos”, inexplicably has a Chinese name.
Hailing from New Jersey, Coben consistently writes potent novels. His others include Hold Tight, The Woods, No Second Chance, Drop Shot and One False Move.
A political-science major at college, the author later worked in the travel industry. Now he arranges flights of fancy into thriller fiction.
Approval rating: 79 per cent.
For more information: www.harlancoben.com
(June 9, 2009)
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