Suspense Novel – Tell No One

Mystery writer, Harlan Coben’s first suspense novel, Tell No One, failed to sweep me into the action initially. While reading the prologue that details Dr. David Beck’s wife’s disappearance on Lake Charmaine, New Jersey, I felt no connection to Beck and was not engaged in the story. In fact I was literally falling asleep. But several chapters in, after two characters are tortured and murdered and Beck begins to question whether his wife (Elizabeth) who disappeared eight years ago is really dead, I began to become involved. By the time Beck is eluding police, assaulting an officer and fleeing for his life I was fully engaged. Coben had me flipping pages, reading as quickly as possible to discover what would happen to this likable pediatrician who police suspect may have killed his wife and villains plan to torture and kill to discover where his wife really is. I was reading so fast that the plot twists and turns would throw me and I would have to back up to make sure I knew what was really going on. I began to suspect that Elizabeth’s death was a plan that she and her father, a police officer, had concocted to protect her from something but I wasn’t sure what or why. Was she in a witness protection program? I guessed right on some things and was way off on others.

Although Coben lets the reader in on what the villains are up to -- some chapters focus on the bad guys and others focus on Beck and his efforts to discover the truth -- he keeps things shifting so that the reader is still learning the truth in the final chapter.

Tell No One seems to be a classic example of suspense with short chapters, fast pacing, menacing mood and a protagonist that elicits readers’ empathy. In short with so much effort spent on pacing and action there is little time for character development or for a reader to wonder if the action is plausible. Coben adds some interesting characters -- Beck’s former college roommate, Shauna, who happens to be his sister’s lesbian lover and partner, and a patient’s father, a drug dealer who wants nothing more than to build a better life for his blind son -- which the reader may like to learn more about. But Coben states in the last chapter that he “can’t tell any of that because I don’t know.”  Maybe he revisits these characters in his numerous subsequent suspense novels?

Tell No One will satisfy readers looking for a suspenseful read with plot twists.

 

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

Published in 2001 by Delacorte Press, New York

339 pages

Set in New York City, NY,  Green River, NJ,  and Lake  Charmaine

Physicians – Fiction, Suspense – Fiction, Detective and Mystery stories, Mystery – Fiction, Murder – Fiction,  Secrecy – Fiction,  Murder victim’s families – Fiction