In the end I was satisfied with the ending, it wrapped up but in a logical way - not like some books I read that tie everything up extra neatly. So, having firsthand experience as a tragic victim of the spyware epidemic begat by insecure significant others and paranoid parents the world over, I thought that I’d have some sort of commonality with this book making it more interesting, but unfortunately, none of my shenanigans were as remarkable as to involve teenage prescription drug abuse and a former black ops agent gone homicidal, only making me feel as if I’m not living my life to its fullest potential. This book is no exception, and there's a sub-plot in the book that seems to exist for no purpose other than to allow for a totally unbelievable development right at the end.

This has proved to be somewhat inconvenient for a former scoundrel such as myself, and also seems a bit unfair seeing as this is a pretty one-sided deal, as I have no such methods of gathering intelligence on her activity. Book club is a social group but it's also a group that introduces new ideas, shares new perspectives and opens our minds. Hank is placed undercover in a gay brothel with the hopes that some of his clients will be spies, and thus the government can apprehend them and their contacts. I've read quite a lot of novels with gay men as the main protagonist but this book was in a class of its own. Chief Investigator Loren Muse is desperate to prove her worth as 'the boss' in the all boys club of the police department.

One of the most difficult aspects of the novel -- Bram handles it with aplomb -- is the '40s attitude toward racial differences.

However, Marianne's face has been so badly mutilated that it is impossible for anyone to identify her. I’m fully aware that I often need a good, swift kick in the ass, but seldom do I realize it so fully when I state that I treasure my time living this humdrum life above anything else on this planet, and proceed to squander it by reading something like Harlan Coben’s Hold Tight. Their offer to Hank was simple: go back to the brothel, work undercover as a prostitute, and risk your life to entrap Nazi spies. Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son's death and he wasn't alone. At the end of Chapter Six we are teased with the mother's realization that Spencer in fact was not alone the night he killed himself.Discuss: Mo feels that, "all parents spy on their kids in some ways" such as checking on their grades and that "this isn't a republic. The two good guys are a reflective, thoughtful, conscience-guided and -plagued Jew and a sailor who is taken for intellectually defective because he doesn’t have a problem having sex with guys (he’s a Thornton Wilder Holy Fool type who got kicked off the set of “Heaven’s My Destination” because he made Mr. As I said, reader response to this novel is all over the spectrum, and it does rub people the wrong way. Question: Should Betsey Hill have confronted Adam directly at school or should she have gone through his parents? Susan and Dante Loriman meet with their son's (Lucas) doctor (Mike Baye) only to be told Lucas urgently needs a kidney transplant.

Fluent, cinematic, engaging writing as usual (although I wonder if he lets a couple get together in any of his books now). He believes doctors should behave like they are worthy of the hopeful feelings the patients have towards them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. These are not series novels; the main character in one novel appears in a few scenes in the second--but the effect is one of accretion; you feel as if you're getting to know these people, this town, that neighborhood. Perhaps my scathing criticism is a product of my tastes, but with nearly every mystery I've ever read, the author seems to simply be going through the motions.

I rarely read them if I can help it, but I decided to give this one a try since I have liked Harlan Coben's books in the past.

This isn't something that could happen to only a select, specific group of people, but rather it could happen to the family down the street. At the same crime scene there is some mild cursing and a major amount of stereotyping, rather derogatorily.Is Coben doing this to convince his own wife he made the right decision in marrying her, has no secrets, would never think of another woman, and still thinks she's as beautiful as the day he married her? The action switches to Tia and Mike Baye who never imagined they'd become spying, overprotective parents. In Paris, he was awarded the prestigious Vermeil Medal of Honor for contributions to culture and society by the Mayor of Paris. All that being at least sort of the case, I’m delighted to note that precisely the opposite obtains with regard to Christopher Bram’s first two novels. This was my January book Pal read, and yet another great Harlan Coben book, full of great characters, twists and turns, with the whole story and different characters weaving in and out of the plots very intertestingly and all coming together for an exciting and frightening few chapters.