The Innocent

From Amazon:

You never meant to kill him….

One night, Matt Hunter innocently tried to break up a fight—and ended up a killer. Now, nine years later, he’s an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. His wife, Olivia, is pregnant, and the two of them are closing on their dream house. But all it will take is one shocking, inexplicable call from Olivia’s phone to shatter Matt’s life a second time….

An electrifying thrill ride of a novel that peeks behind the white picket fences of suburbia, The Innocent is at once a twisting, turning, emotionally charged story and a compelling tale of the choices we make and the repercussions that never leave.

My Thoughts:

Harlan Coben is indeed a master of his craft. This novel sees Coben weaving a show more very complex plot, populated with believable characters and, at the end, leaving the reader disappointed that the book has drawn to a close. You want more. More of Matt Hunter, who accidentally killed someone in a college brawl. More of Loren Muse, the intelligent, conflicted investigator who thinks Hunter is involved with current murders. More of Olivia Hunter, Matt's pregnant wife who wants nothing more than an ordinary life. And more of all the characters Coben creates.
He is that good.

The story is not simple. Coben's plotting reminds me of a tree: it starts at the bottom with a trunk and than branches off with some of the branches intertwining with others. Stories and characters overlap, but not to point of confusion.

He has written a superb mystery thriller. Ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances and doing what they must to survive --- if the bad guys don't kill them first. show less

Book on CD performed by Scott Brick
3.5***

Matt Hunter made a major mistake when he tried to break up a fight. A man wound up dead, and Matt was convicted of murder. Now he’s an ex-con, but working in his brother’s law firm as a paralegal. Married and starting a family with his wife, Olivia, they’re about to buy a house and things are looking up. And then things go south. Matt notices a man tailing him, then he gets a disturbing photo from his wife’s cell phone. He hires a private investigator to find out who the man is, but he turns up dead – murdered. Now police, both local and federal, are looking at Matt, a former con with one murder already on his record.

Coben knows how to craft a fast-paced thriller that kept me turning show more pages (or changing CDs). However … I found this plot way too convoluted. I get that the author is trying to keep the reader off guard as much as the characters, but I was losing interest because nothing was coming together. I’m glad I persevered, however, because about half-way through I found I just could not put this down.

I liked Matt as a character; he’s a stand-up guy, smart and resourceful. His inability to trust people around him is understandable. And I really liked homicide investigator Loren Muse; a childhood friend of Matt’s, she’s skeptical of the pattern emerging and keeps digging until she finds the real culprits. Olivia? I couldn’t stand her. Matt deserves better.

Scott Brick is a very talented voice artist. I really liked the way he narrated the audio. Though I read at least a third of this in text format, I’m bumping up the rating by a half star on the strength of Brick’s performance. show less

The Innocent by Harlan Coben
Mystery thriller. Stand-alone. Original publication 2005.
Matt Hunter tries to break up a fight in college after a night of drinking, but it ends with him accidentally killing one of the others. He ends up doing time. Nine years later, Matt is working in a law office, as a paralegal and planning on buying a home with his wife in his home town. One morning, after his wife leaves for work, he gets a text photo from her phone. A man apparently in a hotel room waving to Matt and then a short video of his wife walking into the room with a blond wig on. Matt calls his wife but she doesn’t answer. He ends up hiring an investigator and things get worse as threats are made while Matt tries to find his wife.

Thrilling show more ride of twists and turns, murder, misdirection, Vegas corruption and cops and lies. Lots of characters. Lots of backstory. Who is trying to help? Who is lying? And why?
Gripping. Loved the constant twists. show less

The “Innocent” of Harlan Coben's title is Matt Hunter, an ordinary young man from New Jersey with a not so ordinary past. As a college student, Matt tried to break up a fight but ended up killing someone instead. Now an ex-con working as a paralegal, Matt believes that his luck has changed. He has reconnected with Olivia, a beautiful woman he knew in better times. The couple are expecting a baby and they are planning a dream home. But when Matt receives compromising pictures of Olivia and a strange man on his camera phone, his plans and what is left of his innocence disintegrate.

Harlan Coben is a modern master of noir, the dark genre in which violence, fate, and flawed character intertwine. On one level, Coben's convoluted plots are show more highly implausible, but on a deeper level they are the stuff of nightmare - irrational, arbitrary, and unrelenting. Coben plunges his readers directly into this nightmare, interweaving a handful of seemingly unrelated storylines that ultimately converge in a dramatic and violent conclusion. One involves Matt himself, another the murder of a nun who turns out to have breast implants, a third a desperate and underage girl from a foster home in Idaho. Also involved are two bent FBI agents and a policewoman mourning the father she lost to suicide. There are many threads stretching back to what happened years ago at a Nevada strip club ingloriously named the Eager Beaver. Good and bad guys converge in Reno, where many answers to the puzzle are unveiled.

Some readers have felt that Coben has been treading water with his last two outings, but this one should re-establish his credentials. show less

Well. That was excellent.
There were enough twists and turns in that one to run a rally on. I like those characters, and the part of my mind that gives faces to characters in books put a face on Olivia stronger than any character I've read in a long while - the face of Thirteen, Remy Hadley from House - Olivia Wilde. Obviously because of her name, but I couldn't tell you if Olivia was described in the book or not, because as soon as I started to form an image of her, she was Thirteen.

It's like a study in "when bad things happen to good people-- but as in all of Coben's books that I have read, things are never what they seem on the surface. The plot unfolded and unfolded again, and again. And though there are bad guys in the story, Matt is not one of them, despite his past. I was rooting for him and for Olivia.

Matt Hunter's whole life changed the day he stepped into stop a fight at a frat party. The day he and Stephen McGrath fell to the ground, and Stephen died. Now, after serving time in prison for Stephen's death, Matt struggles to keep it together "in the real world." He's now married, expecting his first child, and buying a house in the neighborhood he grew up in. Everything seems to be going well, until he gets two strange picture messages on his cellphone from his wife's phone. As he tries to sort out his emotions and figure out what's going on, he's suddenly a suspect for the murder of a nun, whom he never met. As the days go on, he becomes the suspect of three murders. He's being set-up, and doesn't know why, until his wife reveals show more her past. The clock is ticking and he has to put the pieces together before he gets sent back to prison for murders he didn't commit. But who did? And, why? show less