TELL NO ONE is Harlan Coben's first standalone novel and deviation from the Myron Bolitar series. Dr. David Beck is practically still a newlywed when he loses his wife, Elizabeth, to a brutal murder by a serial killer. Eight years later two men are found dead in the same area where Elizabeth had been abducted. It is determined that the two men had been dead for approximately...eight years. Then the craziness begins. David Beck begins to receive cryptic messages leading him to believe his wife is alive. And at the same time the police begin investigating Beck as his wife's murderer, even though her murder was attributed to the serial killer and closed eight years ago. What is the truth and can Beck uncover it before the police close in on him?

I listened to TELL NO ONE on audio book. Recorded Books published this audio book and it was read by Ed Sala. While I think Sala did a very nice job with the reading, emphasizing appropriately to enhance the thrill effect, the one objection I had was that he sounded too old for the character of David Beck. I had a hard time getting past that as I listened.

The plot of this book is outstanding, and I believe that a large reason for that is the theme of the novel. The overall idea that a person could love and miss someone so much that they would be willing to give their own life to have that person back is not a foreign emotion to most people. So, while 99.9% of the world would never encounter a situation anywhere near David Beck's situation, they can still identify with this character, share an understanding of his grief. That understanding is what heightens the tension of this novel. And of course Coben's twists add a degree of excitement to the plot as well.

Coben is a character genius. Deviating from his tried and true cast from the Bolitar mysteries he creates a new ensemble equally as rich. David Beck is far from your Superman hero. After all the man failed to save his wife from being abducted. But Beck's strengths lie in his intelligence, his devotion and his humanity. One of the most poignant scenes in the book for me was when Beck assaults a police officer and is absolutely mortified and repulsed by his behavior. He acted instinctively and could not believe it was he who was behaving in such a manner. That characteristic is far more attractive to me as a reader than the character who throws violence around without a second thought. Coben leaves that to the masochistic villain Eric Wu.

But another element of Coben's character genius is his diverse cast of character. All the heroes are not lily-white. As he does with Win in the Bolitar mysteries, Coben adds a character who makes the reader check his/her beliefs. A character who for all intents and purposes does bad things. But his character is simple enough to label as bad. Tyrese fills this role in TELL NO ONE. And it would not be a signature Coben novel without humor. Shauna provides a great deal of this humor. The reader knows right off the bat that fun has walked in when Beck's assistant intercoms him to say that, "you're...uh...um...Shauna is here."

TELL NO ONE was an exciting thriller that had me gripping my steering wheel a little tighter than usual, laughing out loud, and declaring "ah ha!" Now I can finally rent the movie! ( )

I devoured this book in something like 4 hours. It was very compelling, albeit somewhat farfetched. I found the perfect love and happiness of Elizabeth and David impossible to believe. They have been together almost continuously since the age of 7 and he still pines for her 8 years after her death. They have all sorts of weird rituals around a first kiss when they were 12. That’s where Elizabeth was taken, at the site of their first kiss.

She was taken by a couple of guys hired by Griffin Scope (of Scope mouthwash fame). They took her because she lied an alibi for a person accused of murdering Brandon Scope, Griffin’s favorite son. Brandon had beaten her up once in the course of her working for the family’s charity foundation. Brandon was a complete sociopath and drug user but the old man never knew. When he was shot, it was assumed that it could be pinned on this career criminal until Elizabeth lied for him. She knew who the real killer was but wouldn’t say.

They should have killed her but her father found out. Hoyt Parker, a cop and paid lackey of Griffin Scope, found out what was going to happen and snatched her back, killing the two thugs. It was the discovery of their long dead bodies that brought all this to the surface. Hoyt had been hiding Elizabeth out of the country for the past 8 years, but now Elizabeth wants back. She is contacting Beck and teasing him into a meeting. But he’s been under surveillance by Scope for the last 8 years and they follow and realize she’s alive. The FBI gets into the act because they think he killed Elizabeth back then and the serial killer it was pinned on didn’t do it.

So he runs with the help of the father of one of his patients, a drug dealer named Tyrese. With the help of his old college buddy, Shauna, who is now Dave’s sister’s girlfriend, he gets to the bottom of things and manages to get the FBI onto Scope. He and Elizabeth are reunited. Ugh. What a sappy ending to a great thriller. Intrigue. Dirty secrets. Money. Murder. It was pretty good. ( )

gelezen als bookazine :-) ( )

This was Coben’s first post-Bolitar stand-alone novel, and he starts out with a theme that reoccurs through many of his stand-alones — the missing and/or presumed dead loved one. It borders a little on over-used, yet it never fails to create suspense. It takes a while in this story before you’re really sure whether or not Elizabeth is alive, but figuring that out is far from the whole story. There’s a lot going on here — so much that I got a little lost in a few places — but Coben does a good job of tying it all up in the end. And I really did not guess the final twist. It was twisty enough to make you rethink some of Beck’s actions. Gotta love that! ( )

For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive. Everyone tells him it's time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible - that somewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive. ( )