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Title: Just One Look by Harlan Coben ISBN: 0-525-94791-4 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.66 (53 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: More of the same...
Comment: Harlan Coben's new book "Just One Look", like his earlier work, is hard to put down. His style is compelling and his heroine, in this story, could be you, watching and wondering as the comfortable life you inow and love disappears in an instant.
The tangle of characters in "Just One Look" starts with husband and wife, Jack and Grace Lawson. Grace is semi-famous as the survivor of a tragic stampede at a rock concert, where 18 people were killed when an out of control crowd tried to escape gunshots. The tragedy is known as "The Boston Massacre" and Grace still limps due to her injuries in the melee.
The Massacre haunts the parents and loved ones of those who died and Grace knows that the disappearance of her husband one night is somehow connected with her past. She can't help but feel responsible for Jack being missing, since she showed him an old photograph of 5 people; the picture mysteriously appeared in the most recent package of photos she had processed at the local Photomat.
Jack's in the photo, but Grace doesn't know the identity of the others...Coben follows her efforts to find the truth about the picture, and to find Jack. Over time, she learns that the others have been tainted by tragedy, have disappeared, or have lost their own lives. In trying to solve the mystery, Grace enlists a mob connection, Carl Vespa, whose son died in the Massacre, local police and attorneys who are all somehow connected to the photograph. Serial-killer-for-hire Eric Wu (who appeared in Coben's "Tell No One") is the key to deaths and disappearances. Grace is able to follow the thread, while trying to keep her small children safe.
Although I was taken with the tension and the mystery of the plot, I was sorely disappointed at the overall quality of the book. Coben seems caught, in his last four works, with a tangle of spouses with mysterious pasts and present disappearances. Although I could not guess the outcomes of this particular thriller, (they remain vague and unsettling, then tumble out of the final chapter) neither was I very interested in the motivations of the characters or the secrets from the past.
Coben needs to incorporate his tension-filled style with a new and more unique plotline in order to keep the audience he's built since he stopped writing his "humor-thriller" series about sports agent Myron Bolitar. In "Just One Look" he gives us great pacing, but then dumps the outcomes one after another in the final chapter. There's not enough new here to be wildly enthusiastic, but I'm not ready to give up on Coben just yet. Still, "Just One Look" could have been titled, "Same Old, Same Old".
Rating: 4
Summary: Still Better Than Most, But Not Quite Up to Par
Comment: I am an avid Coben fan. I have read most of the Bolitar mysteries and all of the other stand alone books (Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance). Just One Look, while a page turner, is in my opinion not up to par with it's predecessors. That said, Coben writes a better "page turner" than most of his peers. The book revolves around a photo found by Grace Evans, a NJ housewife. In the photo are an old picture of her husband along with other people she does not know. When she asks her husband Jack about the picture, he immediately disappears. Her investigation uncovers years of a cover-up involving an incident that involved her from years past.
The plot, while enough to keep me interested, did not measure up to Coben's previous three books. How about another Bolitar, Mr. Coben?
Rating: 3
Summary: Good Book--Bad Ending
Comment: I couldn't read this book fast enough. It started out so good that I couldn't wait for the slam-bang ending to see how all the characters were tied together. But the ending makes you feel like you have to write a book report to describe who was who and who did what and why. It was so confusing I couldn't even believe it. It was like the author got someone else to finish this mess of a plot. I was thinking of getting another of his books to read, but after finishing it, I think not. I can't even loan it to a friend with a clear conscience.
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Title: The Narrows: A Novel by Michael Connelly ISBN: 0316155306 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 03 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Therapy by Jonathan Kellerman ISBN: 0345452593 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Hidden Prey by John Sandford ISBN: 039915180X Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 11 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: 3rd Degree by James Patterson, Andrew Gross ISBN: 0316603570 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Last Juror by John Grisham ISBN: 0385510438 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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