Copyright 1990 by Harlen Coben. Published by Penguin Group, New York.
Harlen Coben is one of my favorite suspense/mystery writers. Play Dead is not one of his better books. In fact I would have to rate it as the worst of his books that I have read. But apparently it was also the first book he ever wrote and as a first effort it is pretty darn good.
So a quick synopsis. David Baskin is an NBA basketball star (nicknamed “White Lightning”) for the Boston Celtics, leading them to a championship. Laura Ayers is a top-tier model and CEO of her own fashion company. Think Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. They meet, fall in love and elope (because her mother, for reasons not immediately obvious, is violently opposed to their union). But while on their honeymoon in Australia David drowns.
Or did he? Note to Coben – if you want to make the reader think he died, don’t signal the truth with a title like “play dead.”
Ok, so David didn’t really die. But why did he fake his death? And why, for God’s sake, did he decide to resurface, with a new face a new hair color and a new name (Mark Seidman) as a mysterious rookie for… yeah, you guessed it… the Boston Celtics? He is immediately nicknamed “White Lightning II”. Not a great strategy for keeping your fake death hidden.
The plot is deep and twisted and is, for the most part, nicely laid out, with appropriate flashbacks. But it isn’t a real headscratcher. The fake death is obvious and Coben’s insistence on avoiding gender identity of the perp (“the killer”, etc.) strongly suggests that he is trying to fool the reader about the gender of the bad… person.
Not bad for a first effort, but pick another Coben book if you want a really good one.
5 out of 10.