Amazon.co.uk Review
In
Gone for Good Harlan Coben continues his self-redefinition as a writer of taut, grim thrillers about love and its vulnerabilities with even more success than in its predecessor
Tell No One. Will has coped with the death of his ex-girlfriend, the disappearance of his brother Ken (the prime suspect in her rape and murder), as well as the demands of his job as a worker with the homeless and terminally messed-up of the New York streets. When it seems that his brother is alive after all, and his lover Sheila disappears, only to be fingered by the FBI as an accessory to murder, Will is at breaking point. Only his dangerous friend Squares and Will's determination to see justice done, and find out what he needs to to ensure it, keep him going during escalating unpleasantness. Will and Ken had some dangerous schoolfellows--among them the gangster McGuane and the assassin known as Ghost--and the roots of the jeopardy Will finds himself in lie years in his past.
Coben does paranoia and deceit as well as he did the good humour of his early sports thrillers--Will is a credible hero because he lives with his own weaknesses and is attractively unaware of his virtues and his charm. --Roz Kaveney
Review
The stunning follow-up to Tell No One.
The action of this genuinely unputdownable thriller starts 11 years after the rape and murder of Will Klein's ex-girlfriend. Will's beloved elder brother Ken was the chief suspect and immediately disappeared; despite an international manhunt he was never found. Now a chance discovery reveals that Ken is alive, but when Will shares the evidence with Sheila, the new woman in his life, she disappears overnight. Will's quest for the truth draws him into a terrible nightmare of betrayals and cover-ups: the more he uncovers, the deeper his discoveries draw him into a version of events where nothing makes sense. Organized crime, the FBI, ghosts from the past and his own family all form a circle of deceit spinning faster than you can turn the pages. Harlan Coben is a true master of suspense. The twists and turns in this plot cannot be anticipated and are exposed one by one with ever-advancing tension. Nor does Coben miss anything in his portrayal of loving and compassionate relationships. Indeed it is a mark of his accomplishment as a writer that he makes credible the tortuous connections between humanity and evil, loyalty and betrayal, and compassion and revenge. An outstanding novel. (Kirkus UK)
A betwixt-and-between thriller from the talented chronicler of sports agent Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.). Eleven years after his brother Ken vanished after being accused of raping and strangling neighborhood girl Julie Miller, Will Klein's dying mother tells him that Ken's still alive. Then, several hours after her funeral, Will suffers an even more devastating loss when his lover Sheila Rogers, a volunteer at Covenant House, the New York shelter for street kids Will runs, disappears as well. And there's even worse news: Joseph Pistillo, the FBI's top man in New York, is not only still looking for Ken, whom he turns out to have a damningly personal reason for wanting to find; he suspects Sheila, who never told Will anything about her turbulent past except that she'd run away from home, was up to no good as well. With the help of Julie's kid sister Katy and his omnicompetent sidekick Squares, an ex-Nazi turned franchise fitness guru, Will goes in search of the truth about Ken and Sheila, ignoring Pistillo's threats of legal action and the even more dire threats of Ken's murderously well-connected school buddies John Asselta, the Ghost (ex-wrestler), and Philip McGuane (ex-student council president) in an attempt to stand on his own two feet after years of hiding behind his big brother's strength. Will's newfound courage comes too late to help Sheila, who's already been killed and dumped at the side of a Nebraska road. But will it save Ken, or Katy, or Will himself? Coben dispenses crucial plot twists with an eyedropper, expertly wringing the maximum suspense out of each jaw-dropping surprise. After a while, though, the high-energy revelations begin to sprawl, and this synthetic, highly enjoyable tale ends up stuck between grim realism and the sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy in which nobody, not even the dead, is ever gone for good. (Kirkus Reviews)
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