Caught by Harlan Coben

Entertaining and fun!, July 20, 2010

This review is from: Caught (Hardcover)

This was a fun summer read, a fast-paced suspense thriller without all the gore or grisly details that are often the hallmark of this genre. If you like Linwood Barclay (No Time for Goodbye or Never Look Away: A Thriller), you'll find that Coben writes similar tales. He writes mysteries about ordinary people faced with unexpected events that cause them to make decisions and perform heroic efforts to find the answers or solutions to the situations.

In this book, a TV news reporter, Wendy Tynes, lures a suspected pedophile, social worker Dan Mercer, to a house where he is "caught" in a sting operation that is televised nationally. In another side plot, teenager Haley McWaid has disappeared from her suburban New Jersey home without a trace. These two stories converge in a plot that becomes more complicated as it evolves. Ultimately, the novel is about accusations, both founded and unfounded, and how quickly reputations can be ruined by false charges, even if later the accused are proven to be not guilty or deemed innocent by the courts. At times, Coben seems to be juggling too many moral and ethical questions, for example, what should be done to parents who provide alcohol to teenagers? Should victims forgive those who have caused them harm? Is vigilante style justice ever acceptable? How far will parents go to protect their children? to name a few. Some of the characters tended to take the moral high road in a manner that almost seemed like a "lesson" or lecture to the reader. As far as characters go, incidentally, none of them were all that likable to me. It also seemed as if there were some loose ends in a rushed ending, but nothing that will keep me up at night wondering!

In short, I recommend this for those who like a quick entertaining read.