Caught

Excellent book

If you are looking for a fast paced thriller/mystery, Harlan Coben's latest, Caught, will certainly do the trick. I was amazed that I finished the 400 page novel in about a day. The drawback was that I found myself reviewing the characters, plot twists, and revelations for much of the next day. Coben has packed quite a bit of information in this novel, and it may take some time to absorb it all. However, in Coben's favor, you will not simply put this book down and forget it. You can't, you have to mentally review the secrets, cover-ups, and characters; there is a lot going on in this novel. Dan Mercer is a social worker, focusing on troubled youth. As he finishes coaching a basketball team, he receives a call from one of his charges, Chynna, asking that he meet her at her home. As Dan walks toward the front door, warning bells are going off in his head. He pushes them aside, and enters the house. Within moments, he is confronted by television cameras and reporter Wendy Tynes, who's mission is to identify and catch sexual predators, using nationally televised sting operations. Dan has been targeted and caught, but he doesn't stay around to answer any of her questions; he runs away. While Dan is on the run, hiding wherever he can, the police make a connection between him and a missing girl, seventeen year-old Haley McWaid. Haley has been missing for several weeks, but the connection makes it appear as though Dan may have had a part in her disappearance. As Wendy is central to the operation that caused Dan to be labeled a predator, she discovers some interesting and alarming facts. Facts that change whom she believes and trusts. Caught moves at breakneck pace, propelled by the characters and the plot twists. Coben does not include much suspense as he does thrills. Driving the thrills is Coben's use of blogging and social media. When posted on the internet, how much is done to determine if those posts are, in fact, correct? The result is usually knee-jerk reactions, which we have seen happen many times in the media, culminating in ruinous character assassinations and job losses. Coben makes a statement about these outlets and results that are all too familiar. For readers familiar with his work, Coben includes an excellent character in Caught that will bring a smile to all fans. Coben's Caught will provide some worthwhile diversion from a long flight, a night of television, or while enjoying a vacation. It won't provide a lot of suspense, but it does pack the thrills. Once the last page has been turned, you will find yourself reviewing the novel, Coben has provided the reader with a lot of characters, with many secrets, and it will require some time to process the ending. Disclosure: Obtained from: Library Payment: Borrowed

This is your basic Harlan Coben novel: something has happened in the distant past which comes back to bite multiple backsides in the present. We are in the suburbs, here, not uncommonly, in New Jersey (HC’s home). There are suspense elements, thriller elements, mystery elements and an extended ending which joins the loose ends and is nice and satisfying. In other words—part Jonathan Kellerman and (with the twists and turns at the end) part Jeffery Deaver. The plotting is masterful, even if the characterization is a little light. The book holds your interest and satisfies HC’s key purpose in writing—to tempt you to read a few pages late in the evening for a taste and then suddenly find yourself still awake at 5:00 in the morning, wondering what happened. In this case the featured character is an investigative TV reporter named Wendy Tynes. Wendy is a youngish widow with a son in high school, a motorcycle-riding father and a successful series on sexual offenders. Her life becomes entwined with a social worker and alleged sexual deviant named Dan Mercer. Dan went to Princeton (which, sorry HC, does not have a medical school) and has been experiencing some nasty reversals in his life, as have a group of his former classmates. Why? What happened in the past? And who is tormenting the Tigers now? This is classic HC, which is to say, highly engaging, highly entertaining, and just a tad implausible. The good news is that HC has built up an ensemble cast over the years. Legal shark Hester Crimstein plays a significant role here; Win Lockwood plays a smaller but still a pivotal role and we even pass the offices of our oldest HC friend, Myron Bolitar. This is not The Long Goodbye, The Big Sleep, or Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, but it is a great deal of fun. The difference is depth of theme, texture and overall weightiness, but HC is not trying to haunt your dreams and alter the shape of your aesthetic life. He is trying to entertain you and hold your attention. That he does masterfully.

I have been a Harlan Coben fan since his first book, "Deal Breaker". While disappointed in his last two books, I've continued to purchase his books without question. This time around, I bought both the Kindle and the Hardback version. This is called full disclosure before writing a review. Outstanding, can't put it down, everything is on hold until you finish kind of book that only Coben can write. He is back to his old form with this one. I can't tell you much about the story since it is like a monster roller coaster - every page has a twist that sends you soaring or falling. Haley McWaid, the eldest and "best" child of a family of three children, captain of the lacrosse team and a Senior in High School is missing. Her mother wakes up one morning and finds Haley never came home the night before. Wendy Tynes is a reporter who has a nationally televised reality show which sets up sexual predators and films them being arrested. Don Mercer is a social worker who lives to help children...or does he? He is the latest possible? pedophile who encounters Wendy Tynes and her cameras. Don's story is complicated and secret. Wendy decides to find out about the man she had arrested. The rest you will have to discover for yourself. This is storytelling at its best. The ending is worth the price in the WOW factor. It is pure Coben with intertwining plots, stories and characters. As the story unwinds, it is hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys - it keeps changing with every page. There are a few characters from stories past and I was thrilled to see Win make a cameo appearance. This is a stand alone, however, and you don't have to have read any of his past books at all - although if you haven't, you have missed some great reading. This is a 5+ star read and I, for one, am glad to see Coben has returned to the kind of story he writes best.

I'm a big fan of Harlan Coben and believe that his books keep getting better and better. There are many story lines in this book, all part of the same story, but each with its own significance. There's the main story about a reporter, Wendy Tynes, who exposed a pedophile based on an email tip. After witnessing the alleged pedophile, Dan Mercer's murder, more and more things don't make sense. As she tries to investigate what truly happened, she uncovers other destructive scandals involving Dan's college friends. This is somehow tied to the disappearance of 17 year old Haley McWaid. I usually guess who did what in Cobens books, although it doesn't ruin it for me. In this book I was pretty clueless until the end when it all tied together. There was one piece of it that was evident by the way he wrote the first chapter, but that wasn't enough to spoil all the revelations to come. This is a stand alone novel with many realistic interesting characters. I've also read all of his Myron Bolitar books, which probably aren't as good as his stand alone novels, but I love the wit and recurrent characters. In " Caught," Coben brings in an unusual and quirky character from the Bolitar series, Win Horne Lockhard, III, which was a novel and entertaining thing to do. He took on important issues woven into the story; issues of how easy it is to ruin a person on the internet, the danger of parents supplying alcohol to their teenager and his/her friends, forgiveness when it's particularly difficult, to name a few. This book has depth, intrigue and many surprises. I can't recommend it highly enough.

What if the drunk driver who killed your spouse in a horrible accident persisted in sending you letters asking for forgiveness, could you forgive her? That's a question that TV news corespondent, Wendy Tynes, struggles with in Harlan Coben's new thriller, Caught. In fact, Forgiveness, in its purest form seems to be the crux of this absorbing mystery. In a scene near the beginning of the novel, after receiving many apologetic letters from her husband's killer -- Ariana Nasbro, now an alcoholic twelve stepper who has recently been released from prison -- Wendy confronts her at a half-way house about an hour from her home in Northern New Jersey: "So I'm here to tell you: Don't send me your self involved AA nonsense. I don't care. I don't want to forgive you so you can heal or recover or whatever the hell you call it...." Wendy hosts a newsmagazine style show called Caught in the Act, which exposes child sexual predators, live and in color, usually at a sting house where the internet chat room lurkers are lured. Her latest exposé ensnares Dan Mercer, a Big Brother type volunteer who coaches and councils troubled inner-city kids. Dan, a divorced Princeton grad, who was a foster child himself, is subsequently arrested and finds his life in ruins. The story jumps three months. Haley McWaid, a teenager and classmate of Wendy's son Charlie, has been missing since around the time of Mercer's arrest. The intermingling of these two unfortunate incidents is what drives the intricate plot of Coben's latest novel. Harlan Coben is basically a dual mode author. Firstly, he writes a series of private eye thrillers featuring Myron Bolitar, a sort of soft-boiled sports agent who finds himself enmeshed in all sorts of intrigue. And secondly, he writes the more socially conscious mysteries like Caught, which usually take place near his real life home of Ridgewood, New Jersey, a somewhat peaceful, wealthy suburban town, about an hour northwest of NYC. For the most part these New Jersey books are separate entities, but occasionally Coben will reintroduce his more dynamic characters like: Frank Tremont, a main character from his last NJ thriller, Hold Tight, and a minor player in Caught; Windsor Horne Lockwood III, a preppy business and computer whiz who is a childhood friend of Myron Bolitar as well as casual sex interest for reporter Tynes; and Hester Crimstein, a no-nonsense, risible, and caustic New York lawyer, one of my favorite recurring Coben characters. In Caught, Coben continues to engage his readers in thoughtful social commentary ripped from the morning headlines. The issue this time becomes modern day smear tactics i.e.; viral blogs, viral video, etc... How easy it is in the current technological climate, with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube, to spread the word, albeit slanderous, about anyone or anything. There are also subtexts that runs throughout many of the author's thrillers. In this book, one of the questions he tackles asks: how much trust do we give our kids and to what length are we willing to go to protect them? Wendy ponders these hypotheticals as she attends the regular meeting of Kasselton High School's Project Graduation, a gathering of parents scheming to make their kid's graduation experience as enjoyable and safe as possible. She peruses the various booths set up along the hallway: Not In Our House, a campaign against parents hosting underage drinking parties; another booth urged parents to post signs which proclaimed DRIVE SLOWLY WE *heart* OUR CHILDREN (as if you don't); Yet another kiosk handed out drinking pledge contracts, coaxing teens to swear an oath to never drink and drive. As she takes her seat, one of the fathers who sits next to her, gestures to the booths. "`Safety Overkill' he said. `We're so overprotective don't you think?' Wendy said nothing..." But later she wonders, "...if perhaps Ariana Nasbro's parents should have attended one of the over-the-top orientations, if maybe all this apparent safety overkill would indeed save a life during the next few weeks, so that some other family wouldn't have to deal with what she and Charlie had." The reader gets the feeling that Coben is frequently weaving his spin into the text, sometimes in a smart-alecky way, but always leaving room for the prevailing ethos. Throughout the book, Coben touches on everything from vigilantism to pseudo Rap music, adding humor in splotches here and there. All of it mixed with a suspenseful plot add up to a satisfying reading experience. Though for me, the essence of this novel returns to the source of Wendy's psychic pain; it's all about our capacity to forgive. [...] Book Jones 3.5 Stars

I give "Caught" three stars because it is well-crafted with a plot that seems to hold together - until the end. In reality, much of what holds "Caught" together is plotting craft. A couple of different elements are actually going on here, and the connections are tenuous between some of the elements. That's why it's a fruit salad. However, the author weaves the plot together skillfully, as long as you don't stop and think about it too much. The female protagonist is engaging, and the author keeps things moving along. The twists make sense, and flow from the several different things that are going on. The characters are less predictable and stereotypical than in many mainstream thrillers. Some will miss a love interest. There's no real love interest here. Don't look for a steamy side to this novel. "Caught" weaves its separate strands into one plot, playing the warp of the weave for plot twists. It's not predictable, because the author only shows you the tip of the iceberg until he wants you to see the whole thing. Some of the coincidences in "Caught" push the envelope of credibility, while a couple of the characters border on implausible. However, they don't slip over the line and cause an eye-rolling reaction. The author of "Caught" fleshes out their motivations enough to save it. Ultimately, "Caught" is well-executed but not steeped in emotion or literary ambition. "Caught" is a little bit pale or faded. Still, "Caught" is good and I enjoyed reading it.

CAUGHT is another excellent book by author Harlan Coben. Dare I say, captivating? In this story, I experienced a number of emotions like disgust and anger. I'll leave it to the reader to their own feelings. This is a very good story. The audible performances by Carrington MacDuffie and Danny Campbell are a wonderful addition to an already well-written story. - Mr.Bill

What a good author love his books looking forward to reading them all. Always a unexpected plot keeps you guessing

Sehr spannend und flüssig geschrieben. Nichts ist schwarz-weiss, keiner nur boese, keiner ein Superheld (obwohl ich Superhelden auch mag). Ich wechsle gerne Autoren .. Jeffrey Archer, James Patterson, John Grisham, Jeff Abbott, usw. im Wechsel. Jetzt mache ich gleich mit Harlan Coben weiter und hoffe, dass er langfristig haelt, was er verspricht.

Não prende tanto a atenção. Mas vale para passar um tempo legal. Leitura rápida e sem muitas surpresas. Não vai ficar na memória, mas não foi um tempo desperdiçado também.

Typical Harlan Coben page turner. Got me hooked early on and kept me engaged

Loved this book, classic Harlan Coben, really good read