Harlan Coben

Reading book reviews at Yahoo Voices (aka: Associated Content, Yahoo Contributor), came upon an article that began: "There is nothing quite like a well written mystery to capture your attention and Harlan Coben is a master at just that. Coben is one of the best authors around today at writing page turning suspense." It also stated:  "Coben's thoroughly satisfying, can't put down books explore human emotion in today's world."

Based on that review, I checked three Harlan Coben mysteries out of the library. Live Wire did not capture my attention with page turning suspense. It simply annoyed me. Without telling the story, will say that author was using a literary devise to create suspense or keep readers reading to find out: What lie did he not want to tell? What were the two words? Were all the Facebook comments relevant to the story or just to add words to it?

I kept thinking of an author's advice to just tell the darn story and get on with it*.  I finally put Live Wire down and added it to my Goodreads' gave up on list. I dreaded starting another of his books, but was not in  the mood for the only other book I had checked out ~ non-fiction, so began Promise Me.

Some of the things that made Live Wire annoying to me were present in Promise Me. Such as with Brenda, why not just tell the story about what happened to her, rather than allude to it, time and again. At one point, I had to go back to an earlier scene at the grave yard, to determine that she was (not) the same (non) character, now mentioned. Sound-alike names or too many names, not relevant to story line or senior memory issues, who knows.
Was glad I decided to give Promise Me a try. Can not say that suspense was what kept me turning pages well into the night; more that the story captured my interest and kept me reading to find out how it would end.

It is hard for authors of mystery series to let new readers know about main characters, without boring old readers of the series. Walter Mosley is a master at doing that. Coben is not. Not that I could do it, as they say, I am just saying.

No homeless mentions in the novel even though some of the action takes place in NYC. Perhaps the streets on Fifth Avenue are deserted in the wee hours of the morning; I would think, "deserted except for a couple of winos sleeping in a doorway" or some such mention would be more realistic ~ the homeless guy pushing the shopping cart, going through trash bins, and so on.

Food for thought:

Life goes on. That was a good thing, right? The outrage flickers and slowly leaks away. The scars heal. But when you let that happen, your soul goes dead a little too.

*nephew's wife threw away a suitcase of my stuff which included my quote collection so no longer can attribute author (have not located it via web searches) or attest to exact accuracy of quote