Run Away by Harlan Coben

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 19, 2019

Simon Greene, a wealth manager, learns that his estranged daughter Paige is playing a guitar for tips in Central Park. Paige is a junkie who has been missing for some time. Simon tries to rescue her, but her boyfriend, Aaron Corval, intervenes. Simon is arrested after punching Aaron and naturally, the video goes viral. A few months later, after Aaron is murdered, Simon and his wife go looking for Paige again.

While that’s happening, a private detective in Chicago named Elena Ramirez is looking for a young man named Henry Thorpe who has also gone missing. Digital messages suggest that Henry was in touch with Paige. Not much time passes before Simon and Elena are working together.

Meanwhile, two orphans named Dee Dee and Ash are roaming around the country doing contract killings. Dee Dee belongs to a cult and therefore claims to know the Truth. Ash loves her but thinks she’s crazy. Maybe she is, but Harlan Coben makes her quite rational as she explains her approach to religion. Dee Dee notes that every follower of a religion (whether or not it is branded as a cult) picks and chooses the religious doctrines they want to obey while rejecting parts of the same religion that seem inconvenient or wrong, and nearly every religion is a profitable business for its leadership. Dee Dee accepts the cult because she accepts those two propositions, following the teachings she likes in the hope that she will obtain a benefit.

Dee Dee is a killer, but she’s more pleasant than most fictional murderers. The plot invites the reader to wonder why Dee Dee and Ash are killing orphans and how Paige’s disappearance fits within the mystery that Simon and Elena are trying to solve.

I generally prefer Coben’s Myron Bolitar novels to his stand-alone books, and that holds true of Run Away. Coben is reliable in that he always writes with pace and creates believable characters. Simon and his family are believable but boring. Dee Dee and Ash are more interesting, but the novel’s best character is an older fellow named Cornelius, who believes that when the rare opportunity to be a hero arises, it is his duty to step up. Unfortunately, Cornelius plays only a limited role.

The story isn’t particularly original. Like some other Coben stand-alone novels, I had the sense that Coben phoned it in. The climactic scene relies on a character coming out of nowhere to save the day. The ending contains one big surprise but the final reveal isn’t surprising at all. Still, Coben’s storytelling skills allow him to phone in very readable novels. Run Away doesn’t tell a great story, but it has enough good moments to make it worth a reader’s time.

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Home by Harlan Coben

Published by Dutton on September 20, 2016

The last couple of Harlan Coben novels I read were stand-alones. They were enjoyable but not fully satisfying. In Home, Coben returned to the Myron Bolitar series. He has also returned to form.

Win Lockwood is searching for two boys, kidnapped in New Jersey, who have been missing for ten years. He’s related to one of them. When he finally spots the other boy, three thugs get in his way. Three dead thugs later, the boy is gone, prompting Win to call Myron Bolitar for help.

Harlan Coben doesn’t usually write jaw-dropping prose, although he occasionally comes up with something clever (“a purple top so tight it could have been sausage casing”). Coben does, however, knows how to keep a story moving, and that’s good enough for a thriller, provided the story is interesting. “Interesting” isn’t a sufficiently forceful word to describe the plot of Home. The captivating story keeps the reader emotionally involved while pondering the fate of the two boys.

The parents of each boy are believable characters. Each parent is obviously the victim of tragedy, but the full nature of their respective tragedies isn’t known until the story concludes. The strongest characters, of course, are Win and Myron, each of whom evolves a bit by the time the story ends. Mickey Bolitar, Myron’s nephew (and the central character in a young adult series), plays a supporting role, along with his friends Ema and Spoon. Win’s cross-dressing buddy Zorra adds a note of comic relief to the story when he isn’t causing mayhem.

The plot needs that comic relief because it is quite intense. Coben builds suspense until he delivers a startling conclusion that resolves the mystery. The climax is emotionally satisfying.

Unlike most modern thrillers, Coben managed to tell a compelling story without overreaching, without relying on implausible coincidence, and without following a formula. I’m glad to see that Coben got his groove back in Home.

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Missing You by Harlan Coben

Published by Dutton on March 18, 2014

Detective Katarina (Kat) Donovan's friend Stacey signs Kat up for an online dating service and who should come up as the perfect match but Kat's former fiancé Jeff Raynes, who is now a widower and raising a child. Well, after all, it's been 18 years since Jeff left her and disappeared so it's not surprising that his life has changed. It is surprising (and ultimately farfetched) that Jeff's picture surfaces during Kat's search, but I can accept one farfetched coincidence for the sake of a good story. Kat experiences considerable anguish over the course of the novel for having a foolish heart (she just can't get over Jeff's tender kisses), a trait that defines Kat's personality and makes her the least interesting character in the novel. Fortunately, Harlan Coben builds greater interest into the bad guys and some of the collateral characters, including Kat's cross-dressing homeless yoga instructor and a female victim who (unlike Kat) doesn't depend upon old boyfriends or an NYPD badge when she needs to muster strength.

The missing boyfriend storyline soon merges with the story of a missing mother. The young man who asks Kat to find his mother has rather improbably located her through her dating profile after concluding that Jeff Raynes is responsible for his mother's disappearance. That setup leads to the twinned mysteries that drive the plot: what happened to the missing mother and where has Raynes been for the last 18 years?

As if that isn't enough drama for one thriller, hit man Monte Leburne is dying of cancer and still refuses to tell Kat who hired him to murder her father. The truth about her father's death (and life) is a secondary mystery that provides occasional diversions from the primary plot. Both the primary and secondary storylines are clever, twisting familiar themes (the danger of online dating, a child's discovery of a parent's hidden past) to make them seem reasonably fresh. The revelation concerning Kat's father's secret is plausible if a bit contrived (I can imagine Coben thinking "What do I need to do to shock my readers?") but is written with sensitivity and compassion.

To the extent that Missing You tries to work as a romance involving the torch that Kat has carried for Raynes, I didn't buy it, in part because that aspect of the story is notable for its cheesiness. In the end, the cheesy romance is tolerable because the rest of the novel works quite well. The pace is suitably brisk and the villains are suitably villainous without becoming over-the-top caricatures of evil. Coben creates satisfying tension near the novel's end that builds to an exciting climax. The mystery surrounding the person responsible for Kat's father's murder reaches a satisfying resolution. In short, while I wasn't thrilled with every aspect of this thriller, it engaged me, surprised me, and made me care about the characters.

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