Tell No One

Stand-alone suspense that has familiar themes but is really well done.

A pediatrician who works with an inner-city clinic still mourns his new bride, the childhood sweetheart he'd married only months before she was murdered while they were at the family's cottage celebrating the anniversary of their relationship. That was eight years ago. Now he receives an anonymous email that is phrased in words that only the two of them would know, such as "kiss time", the exact time they originally kissed. This sets off a whirlwind of events and violence over several days in which he tries to determine if it's a hoax or she's somehow alive, people around him start to get tortured to death, and he is accused by the FBI of having killed her in the show more first place. It's pretty tense, for all that it seems it's been done before, and I was hooked, hoping that the time wouldn't be wasted. It wasn't! Now I'm going to look into Coben's other (crowded) backlist, of which this seems to be the first I've read. Isn't it nice to find an established author you've only just discovered? show less

Buscando por Internet encontré esta historia en varias listas de "Libros con los mejores plot-twist", así que por supuesto deje todo lo que estaba haciendo y comencé a leerlo.

El principio me recordó bastante a [b:Gone Girl|21480930|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406511734s/21480930.jpg|13306276]: tenemos una esposa ¿muerta?/¿desaparecida? y un marido sospechoso del crimen. Sin embargo, a medida que la historia avanzaba, me di cuenta que allí acababa el parecido. Tell No One tiene un trasfondo mucho más complejo.

Lo que me gustó:

•La forma en que el autor va presentando y entremezclando la historia de los personajes, hasta llegar al desenlace, logrando darle complejidad y protagonismo incluso a los show more secundarios. Aquí los malos no son completamente malos excepto tal vez Wu y los buenos no son completamente buenos.

•El suspenso. Es esa misma complejidad de los personajes el responsable del suspenso, ya que los hace reales e impredecibles, por lo que nunca estás seguro de lo que va a ocurrir a continuación. La historia es una de esas page turner.

•Eric Wu. ¿Un hombre capaz de matar sólo con sus manos? Puede sonar meh, pero la verdad es que mi corazón se aceleraba y los personajes temblaban con la simple mención de su nombre. El es el protagonista de varias escenas de torturas que, aunque no son para nada gráficas, son aterradoras. Coben logra esto mostrándote solo vestigios de su maldad y dejando lo demás a tu imaginación. ¿Y la parte en la que cuenta la historia de como murió su madre? Brutal. Uno de los villanos más memorables que he leído. (Ptss, ey, autores: así es como se escribe un personaje malvado.)

Lo que NO me gustó:

•El desenlace. Tenemos una historia que va cobrando forma poco a poco, llena de personajes interesantes y de secretos. Así que lo menos que esperaba era un final también interesante donde -duh- revelarán un gran secreto. Después de todo este libro tiene uno de los mejores plot-twist, ¿cierto? No.

Tal vez es que tenía muy altas expectativas, o tal vez es que he visto mucho CSI o leído demasiados libros de Agatha Christie, pero la verdad es que el final me pareció obvio y muy happily ever after.

[b:Tell No One|43933|Tell No One|Harlan Coben|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327948648s/43933.jpg|977015], me gustaste pero... show less

Good Film =/= Good Book

I got halfway through this before giving up as it's just unpleasant to read/ listen to from the topic, to the not so great writing, and the OK narration.

I feel rather like I did when reading the Codename Villanelle books after watching Killing Eve -- truly blown away with what scriptwriters, directors, and actors can do with rather meh source material. Also reminiscent of the CV books, but not translated into other media is the snide conservatism and white patriarchal undertones that infuse the writing.

My experience continues to tell me that good books often make bad movies, while bad books can be made into far better media.

If you want trashy airport thriller crack on, but if you want an actually weighty action show more thriller I would say watch the French movie instead. show less

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. show more 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. show less

Another thrilling read from Harlan Coben. An original and interesting idea about Beck's wife Elizabeth, who was murdered eight years ago returning. The plot became more and more entangled and complicated and it could be hard to keep up. The twists and turns carried on right to the very last page. Set in New York, there is plenty of grit in this novel and the importance of family. There is also loyalty and kindness.

I really liked that it kept moving, and was always hard to put down, even when I only picked it up for a “couple quick pages”. While I was finishing it up last night, there were a couple of times I realized that I wasn’t breathing. ;) Lots of different layers to the story, and interesting things happening simultaneously. Believable, down to earth, funny characters. I have never read this author before, but it is love at first read.

I don’t know how Coben does it. The most complicated plot with twists and turns, until the Very Last PAGE!! One would suspect it to be impossible to keep up, yet Coben is so clever he drags us along without letting us get off track. It’s the sort of writing that has me asking, “Where is this going?!” but stay with it another paragraph and you’ll be on track again, albeit not where you thought you were going.