Copyright 2006 by Harlan Coben, published Signet, a division of Penguin Books Ltd, London.

I like Harlan Coben’s books. This is the 12th Coben book I have reviewed and I may have read a few that I didn’t review. All have been good. Some have been spectacularly good. This one is nearly spectacularly good.

Coben has a number of book series with different protagonists. This is #8 in the series of books featuring Myron Bolitar, sports agent and former basketball phenom. He is often assisted by his upper crust head-banging “uber-WASP” buddy Win (actual name Windsor Horne Lockwood III) and he certainly assists in this one.

The main story here starts with a promise that Myron makes to the daughter of the woman he is dating and the daughter’s friend. He was alarmed when he overheard them talking about getting a ride home from a boy who was drunk. His promise: call me if you need a ride. Any time. No questions asked. Won’t tell your parents.

He receives that phone call around 2am a few weeks later from the friend of the daughter. She is in Manhattan and needs a ride to New Jersey, to a friend’s house where she is staying overnight. Myron picks her up and delivers her to the address she gives. A good deed done, right? Yes, except that she then disappears. The place where she was delivered knows nothing about her and no children live there. And the place where Myron picked her up in Manhattan? The exact spot where another girl disappeared just a few weeks before. Myron is suddenly the prime suspect in a series of kidnappings. Myron needs to figure out what is going on, to save himself.

Myron finds the first girl, but has to deal with the girl’s father who is a bad guy into a variety of illegal activities. He is convinced that Myron has taken his daughter and sends two thugs to question him. Win is instrumental in extracting Myron from this dangerous duo. And this first girl is, in fact, a runaway. But how can it be that the other girl was at the same location in Manhattan? They went to the same school but didn’t know each other.

That question – how the two girls disappearances are related – is the core question in this book. And its answer is a huge surprise. Coben always produces plots with big surprises. That is one of the things I love about Coben’s books – they keep me guessing.

There is also a romantic subplot that is very satisfying.

9 out of 10.

Copyright 2024 by David Benjamin. Published by Last Kid Books, Madison WI.

David Benjamin, one of my oldest and best friends is a very imaginative writer with a keen sense of the absurd. He is a master of the short essay. He calls them “screeds” which isn’t fair to him as the term implies an unpleasant or boring story. His screeds – he has written thousands – are never boring or unpleasant. His earlier collection of screeds, Almost Killed by a Train of Thought, is, I think, one of his best books. This one, Christmas in a Jugular Vein, is similar in that it is mostly a collection of screeds, but he has thrown in some poetry, too, and a few longer stories. All with a Christmas theme. All of which are guaranteed to amuse you and, usually, think. For example, how would the Nativity Story be different if the three wise men had to pass through a TSA checkpoint on the way to Bethlehem? What if Mary and Joseph had a promoter? If the inn was full where were the wise men staying that night? What if Santa had been there?

One of my favorite essays is the final one – “Nobody says.” This is a reworking of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in which the Christmas ghosts are replaced by Christmas zombies. The Cratchits move into a vacant mansion and are shunned by the neighbors for a reason that nobody says (hence the title). Turns out the mansion was once owned by Ebeneezer Scrooge and was sold to the Cratchits by a shady realtor named Jacob Marley. As the Cratchits learned at midnight on Christmas, zombies, including undead Santas, magi, shepherds and elves and led by the first zombie, Ebeneezer Scrooge III, swarm the mansion in search of… no, not human flesh… cookies and milk.

Now THAT is imaginative.

I found these essays to be charming, amusing and thought-provoking. A fun read.

8 out of 10.