Tell No One by Harlan Coben

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb:  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.

Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope.

But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret- and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.



Read as an audio book.

Intense. Holey smokes was this intense.

I managed to listen through Disk 4 when I became so thoroughly uncomfortable and irritated with the whole aspect of the widowed Dr. Beck being pursued by homicidal maniacs and FBI agents intent in their convictions that HE killed his wife, that I had to stop, put in the last disk and find out what happened.

Well. Totally didn't see THAT ending coming!

Not having my next audio book in hand, I went back and picked back up with Disk 5. MUCH more enjoyable now knowing the ending and I could just sit back and watch everything unfold. From this perspective, I could now see all the little hints being dropped along the way, that a very astute reader might pick up on. And I do mean they were little and subtle. So WELL done!

Premise of the book is 8 years previously, Dr. David Beck and his wife Elizabeth were visiting the Kissing Tree at his family's lake, when Elizabeth is kidnapped and Dr. Beck brutally attacked and left to drown. Fast forward 8 years, Dr. Beck didn't drown by some miracle but he's lived on with the still tender memories of the since deceased Elizabeth. While checking email, David receives an video email from Elizabeth and his world as he knew it ends. Now on the run from the FBI, the local police, and some unknown entities hit man, Dr. Beck must prove to everyone not only did he NOT kill his wife, but that she is very much alive.

This is the third stand-alone by Coben that I've read: Fool Me Once and Six Years being the other two. I've noticed a trend in the three books, and I don't know if this is the case for all his stand-alone's, but with these three Coben explores the Missing Spouse theme. Of these three, I would have to say Tell No One was the most...intense.

My biggest peeve - the repeated use of the phrase "I don't understand...".

Second biggest peeve - the character's Rebecca's death. While her demise pointed the FBI and police soundly in Beck's direction, and thus the impetus for Beck going on the run, I don't like pointless brutality and this fell under pointless brutality. My quirk.

If you enjoy an intense, engaging mystery thriller, read Tell No One.



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