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

This was a tremendous read, its been sat on my book shelves for ages until I picked it up last week, and then got through it in a couple of days.

The set up, a young married couple are brutually attacked, the wife kidnapped, tortured and killed by a serial killer who is then caught and imprisoned. Eight years later, the husband receives a strange e-mail with a link, when he follows the link it shows him a street scene on web cam, as he watches, his wife steps in front of the camera, speaks to him, then walks away.

Tell No One is a non stop rollercoaster of thrills as the protagonist Dr. Beck is plunged into a whirl of violence and intrigue as he strggles to understand what could have happened to his wife eight years ago. The plot show more constantly twists and turns as Beck uncovers revelation after revelation, I do like the sort of book where you cannot see the next plot jink coming, and Coben even saves a final twist for the very last page.

A really good thriller, very entertaining, top marks. show less

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 show more 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! show less

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.