Play Dead

This book was so deadly awful that I’m not even going to grace it with a synopsis except for this: an unbelievably gorgeous ex-model and current fashion mogul gets married to an unbelievably handsome and talented basketball star. They have to elope because her mother inexplicably hates the guy. While on the honeymoon, she has to go to some business meeting (at his insistence of course) and while she’s gone he mysteriously drowns. His best friend TC flies from Boston and identifies the body. Now the wonder woman must get to the bottom of this. She is tipped off that something weird is going on because $500K disappears from one of his accounts (now hers after like 2 days of marriage).

Of course he’s not really dead. A mysterious show more newcomer who spectacularly makes the Celtics new starting line up has a ‘fade away dunk’ like the dead guy’s. and now they’re calling him White Lightning II. Oh puleeze.

Turns out that he disappeared because the model’s mother went to Australia (where they were secretly eloping) and told him that he couldn’t stay married to her daughter because he is her brother. She had an affair with his father years ago and the model (who used to be a fat ugly girl but is so spectacular now that the author had to keep reminding us of her fabulous body and mind-numbingly beautiful face over and over and over and over) is the result of the affair.

In another completely unbelievable twist, the mother of the model is wrong about the paternity of her child even though she hadn’t been sleeping with her husband for 2 months before conception. You see, the husband found out she was pregnant with another man’s child, killed the father and then drugged the mother so he could abort the child. The mother thought she was just having morning sickness (I guess the author also expected us to think she ignored the weeks of bleeding afterwards too, thinking that’s what a normal pregnancy was like!) then the mother’s plan to seduce the father over and over so he would think the kid was his.

The writing itself was idiotic to the point of hilarity. I mean it was awful. One of the worst things I have ever come across. If I still had the wretched thing here I could open it to any page and copy and example. If I hadn’t read the other Coben book first, I certainly never would again. I probably won’t read another because basically the two I read were exact duplicates in terms of story. The characters were terrible and about as deep as a cat box. show less

Having selected this novel from a pile of offerings by this author, I wish I had bothered to read the introduction before checking it out of the library. It begins like this:

“Okay, if this is the first book of mine you’re going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It’s okay. I’ll wait.”

Coben goes on to explain that he wrote the book 20 years ago and has not edited it since. He states that it is flawed and implies that it is rather poorly written, but reassures the reader that he still loves this book. I hadn’t read anything by him before so I thought that I’d still give this a whirl. Frankly, I wish I’d listened to his advice.

The premise

A ridiculously gorgeous and rich model turned supremely successful business show more woman secretly marries a stupidly handsome and rich pro athlete at the top of his career. While on their secret honeymoon, David disappears and it soon transpires that he has drowned. Or has he? Driven by her grief, Laura is compelled to discover exactly what happened to her new husband, even if it means drawing a killer’s attention to her.

My thoughts

The prologue gave an immediate flavour of the writing style: clichéd and overly dramatic. Set 29 years earlier than the main storyline, it clearly directed my attention to the past as an important element of the plot. Stylistically, it reminded me of the opening sequence of a horror movie (or even a Point Horror story!) as an unidentified woman argues with a man who is then murdered by an unseen hand. It succeeded in inducing some curiosity from me but was very poorly written, as was the whole book.

The opening chapter launched me into the world of the rich and famous. Personally, this alienated me a little from the start as I would rather read about ‘real’ people. A top model and a pro athlete just makes it all seem a bit Jackie Collins - especially as the first scene opens on the special couple’s honeymoon with them joking about how worn out they are. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!) Oh - and the ex model, who retired at 23, was Businesswoman of the Year. The characters reminded me of a high school novel that focused on the homecoming queen and top jock. Obviously, there are real people who are incredibly talented, but this just felt very one dimensional and I found it difficult to care about these characters.

I quickly found the focus on physical beauty and admiration rather tedious, (yes, they’re gorgeous, I understand that, now please stop writing about their glistening skin,) and the clunking sexual puns could be spotted several lines ahead of their wince-inducing dénouement. Early on, David actually uses the cliché 'you've made me the happiest man in the world' followed by 'I couldn't live without you’. I felt like I was reading a Mills and Boon offering. This insistence on physical beauty continues throughout. Take the following example:

“When Laura and [close friend] Serita entered the Heritage of Boston Bank together, everyone stopped. Typewriters halted their clacking. Heads turned. Eyes stared. Mouths dropped. Men gawked. Walking alone, Laura and Serita could make a man’s eyes water; looking at them both at the same time could cause a cerebral accident.”

It makes me wonder how they made it to the bank without causing traffic accidents. This actually isn’t the whole description, but you get the idea. This is very bad chicklit pretending to be good crime fiction.

From the opening it is clear that David’s disappearance is more complicated than the tragic shark death (yes, really) his policeman friend sadly reveals to the grieving widow. Switches in third person perspective make it clear that Laura is right to be suspicious: everyone around her seems to have secrets related to her husband’s disappearance. Why is some of David’s money missing? Who is the new mystery player who has taken David’s spot on the team? And why was Laura’s mother so firmly against her relationship with David?

The trouble is, although there are a lot of questions, the answers are disconcertingly obvious to the reader (at least, they were to me, and I deliberately read crime fiction with my brain switched off) and despite Coben’s best efforts at introducing twists and turns into the plot, from about a fifth of the way through I had most of the answers. Furthermore, a fifth of the way through was 100 pages; this book needed a better editor as it would have felt a lot more tightly paced if it was a good 100-150 pages shorter.

The characters are firmly one dimensional, which is how Coben justifies his ludicrous conclusion. David is motivated purely by his love of Laura; Laura is driven by her love of David; and everyone else is determined to keep secrets from the past locked away. Motivations are incredibly simplistic and do not feel sufficient, even if you assume that several of the characters are insane. The most interesting character and exception to the rule is Stan, David’s brother and a weasel who tries to better himself. His slips back into being an evil idiot are perhaps inevitable but I found he added some interest to an otherwise bland cast. That said…his romantic and moral path was ultimately rather predictable.

Final thoughts

Predictable plotting and one dimensional characterisation do not have to equal a bad novel, but I would struggle to identify a redeeming feature in this instance. The writing style is poor: clunky, clichéd and lacking variety in sentence structure. The book is too long and feels over written. I would probably still try a later Coben work as reviews I have read online suggest that this is not typical of his oeuvre, but I was disappointed with this and won’t be rushing to read another. If you’ve never read anything by him and would like to try, I’d follow his advice: don’t start with this one. show less

In my overcrowded bookshelves in my bedroom, the To Be Read pile never seems to go down, probably because I keep adding to it. Some are brand new some charity shop rescues. Among these are four early Harlan Coben's, one of my favourite Author's
Imagine my surprise upon opening this book to see the following paragraph in the introduction and I quote.
Okay, if this is the first book of mine you're going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It's okay. I'll wait.
I chose not to follow the great man's advice and read and thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I found hard to put down damn chores. More than enough surprises and twists and turns for any reader, superb characterisation throughout totally gripping from first to last show more page.
Completely and utterly recommended. show less

Play Dead was a suspenseful, complicated mystery; however, it lacked the hard edge I'm used to in this author's current books. I felt like I was reading a Danielle Steel novel—no offense to Ms. Steel; I love her work. Only after I read it did I find out this book was one of Mr. Coben's early works, rereleased in 2010. Like Just One Look, published in 2004, it lacks sophistication. The plot was barely believable. The characters were either too gullible or downright evil. One of the main characters fakes his death, has plastic surgery, changes his name, and then reappears as the talented basketball star he originally was and thinks that will go unnoticed. What? Nobody—not even in a book—would be that dumb. The good part is that Mr. show more Coben plants the hook early, takes the reader on a wild rollercoaster ride, and ties everything up. Although the end wasn't the big surprise it might have been, it did entertain. show less

I would disagree with Adpaton's review only in so far as I did think that this book was, at various points laugh-out-loud awful. It is impossible to exaggerate just how dire the writing is. It could very well be used for a "how not to do it" writer's workshop. Approached from that perspective, the book can actually be quite rewarding. (Surely, surely, he won't digress from the action for yet another pointless flashback that adds nothing to the story....oh yes he will.....)

I bought the book very cheaply on the Kindle bookstore so the only positive point I can cite is that at least I haven't been responsible for setting loose another physical copy of this book in the wild (it certainly wouldn't have been staying on my bookshelf!).

This book comes with a chummy introduction by the author much like the ones you sometimes get in Stephen King novels, warning the reader that this is an early book and not up to the same standards as his most recent stuff. This had the effect of reducing my expectations to near zero, but having finished it I'd have to say this is as good as anything else I've read by him, and in some cases, better. It has an airier feel - more breathing space, fewer wisecracks (though I don't always dislike those).

If I'm going to find fault, it's going to be with the whodunnit element - there weren't enough characters to make it a challenge. I did guess the 'why' as well as the 'who' and i don't manage that very often. And why why why do all the female show more characters have to have perfect bodies? The fact that they all have to be candidates for Mensa as well doesn't make it right.

But the book had me gripped from page one, even after I had guessed at the secrets. It keeps events coming thick and fast, and ultimately it goes the way the reader wants it to. show less

This was Harlan Coben’s first published novel, and he freely admits in the introduction that it’s not particularly good. And he’s right! The plot is outlandish and overly complicated, but beneath that and the sometimes cliched writing, you can see the beginnings of what Coben will become.

I wish I could discuss the plot without spoiling it, but I’m really not sure how. Basically, there is a step taken that is really extreme and seems pretty unnecessary. Beyond that is a lot of family drama. Coben does a good job of giving us multiple points of view, including the killer’s, and he manages to give us the killer’s point of view without spoiling who it is. That’s not easy to do!

So overall, much like Coben himself, I wouldn’t show more recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read Coben before. In fact, I’m not sure I would recommend it even to a Coben fan. But if you’re a completist, it’s really not that painful to read. show less