The Blurb:

“From the internationally NO.1 bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive. Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate and nationally televised sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben’s trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this case, or the motives of the people around her.”

  What I thought:

I am a big fan of Harlan Coben’s: I love the fast paced, page-turning suspense that you get with his books; they’re great to listen to in the car on a long journey or to curl up with when you want a quick but gripping read.

This is not, in my opinion, one of his best however. The synopsys tells of the disappearance of a teenage girl (who seemingly vanishes off the face of the earth) but in actual fact, she is barely part of the plot. The book centres around Wendy Tynes, a TV journalist who orchestrates a paedophile sting on live TV to catch Dan Mercer, a youth worker who has been brought to their attention for attempting to meet a 13 year old girl he had apparantly met online. The first chapter is actually narrated by Dan Mercer too, but he then disappears for the rest of the book.

Wendy Tynes, after single-handedly bringing down the reputation of Dan Mercer, then decides that he might be innocent afterall and embarks on tracking down his friends to find out the truth. The deeper she digs the more she realises that there is something much bigger going on and that his old college room-mates may have befallen similar fates.

I can’t say too much more without the risk of ruining the book for anyone else, but I have to conclude that this is one of my least favourites of Coben’s. I know you have to suspend your disbelief for most thriller / crime books but this never felt believable to me (especially when you discover who and why).

I can allow Mr Coben one slip as I have loved all his other books but I would have to say “meh…” to this one.