The secondary plot that crisscrosses with the first, and then the next about a secret cult that comes out of left field, require a forced suspension of disbelief. The plot in Run Away thickens as expected, because there needs to be a buildup before the culmination in a thriller, but in this, it’s as weak as gruel without enough starch to thicken it, however much you boil it.

Have there been any attempts made at reconciliation? And why isn’t Ingrid as invested in finding Phoebe and bringing her home? Coben resorts to his tried-and-tested trope of frequent twists, but maybe because I have read most of his older novels, I could see the twists coming from a mile away.Ĭoben’s novels are always fast-paced, making them easy, quick reads, but I found myself staggering through this. What is this distance that separates father and daughter, even though they are close enough to see each other physically? What turn of events prompted the estrangement? A junkie who chooses to give up a protected life with her parents and siblings, Phoebe now busks in Central Park for pennies to feed her drug habit. What follows next is multiple plots colliding with a slew of unsavoury characters, who lead Simon down a spiralling maze of situations to find a daughter who seems determined to not be found.Īs the novel opens, Simon locates his runaway daughter in Central Park in New York. Their perfect suburban life is shattered when Phoebe, their eldest, falls into a life of drugs and substance abuse and runs away from home. In Run Away, Simon Greene and Ingrid, his wife, live a cosy life somewhere in New Jersey. But this review is about his latest novel, Run Away, and boy, was it a damp squib for someone who’s been a Coben fangirl for close to 20 years. Tell No One was made into a movie by Hollywood, and if you subscribe to Netflix, chances are you will also have watched the Michael C Hall eight-part series, Safe, based on another novel by Coben. The easy camaraderie, office banter, and a compulsive need to do right by the world were the hallmarks of the Bolitar novels. If Coben’s standalone novels spoke of his adroit penmanship of introducing more plot twists in a story than there are potholes in Bengaluru, the Bolitar novels also were testament to his ability to create believable, reliable, relatable characters. Let’s also talk about his Myron Bolitar novels (sports agent with that awful name), featuring sidekick Windsor Horne Lockwood III, an affable playboy with some questionable tendencies. He had already to his credit a series with sports agent Myron Bolitar as a central character, but standalone Tell No One catapulted him into the pulp fiction stratosphere with its never-let-go, twist-a-minute plot, so much so that if you look him up online, chances are descriptors on search pages will list him as (author of Tell No One). Harlan Coben burst onto the scene with his thriller, Tell No One.

Tell no one harlan coben book summary