Copyright 1998 by Harlan Coben. Published by Dell, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Some (a few?) of you may recall that I reviewed another Harlan Coben book, The Woods, back in August and raved about it.  One of the best mysteries that I have read in many years.  Well, this is the same author but a different protagonist, Myron Bolitar (5th in the series).  I am not raving about this one.

Myron Bolitar is a sports agent, forced into that profession by an injury that ended his short NBA career.  He is good at what he does.  In this book he is representing a young professional female basketball player, Brenda Slaughter, the star of a new women’s league.  She is not only talented but is also beautiful and Myron falls for her.  But this is not just a simple pro/agent romance; she is also being harassed by person or persons unknown and, shortly, becomes the prime suspect in her father’s murder.

Not much of what Myron can see initially makes much sense.  Why was her father murdered?  Why did her mother disappear 20 years prior when Brenda was just 5?  Why is she now getting anonymous phone calls telling her to find her mother?  What, if anything, does this have to do with Arthur Bradford, her mother’s employer when she disappeared and who is now running for governor of New Jersey?

It is a complex tale and it takes nearly 400 pages for Myron to unravel it.  He figures it out eventually, with the help of his sidekick, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (“Win” for short) who is an unlikely combination of financial advisor and preppy headcracker – he saves Myron’s butt more than once.  He is one of these literary characters who could be tied to the tracks with a freight train just seconds away from crushing the life out of him and he would be smiling and cracking wise because somehow he will find a way out of the predicament.  I suppose he is fun as comic relief, but it is hard to take a book seriously with a character like him.

So this should have been a book that I couldn’t put down and yet I did.  Many times.  In the end I admired the complexity of the plot and will concede that most of the loose ends (but not all) were tied up.  And I didn’t guess the culprit.  But it wasn’t a fun read.

5 out of 10.

Copyright 2017 by Columbia Rose Ltd. Published by Grand Central Publishing.

This is the 5th book in the series featuring the one-man army named Will Robie.  The book starts with Robie in London single-handedly wiping out a band of 16 terrorists.  But he is on the outs with his equally-lethal girlfriend, Jessica Reel, who while Robie was occupied in London was in Iraq wiping out about 40 insurgents, including a bunch in armored cars.  She was the only one of her team of 16 to survive, but her mission was counted as a success.  So the body count is hovering around 70 before the main story even begins.

What is the main story?  “Blue Man” – the boss of both Robie and Reel – has gone missing while vacationing in Colorado.  They are both called back to the US and sent, together, to Colorado, to find Blue Man.  They encounter a small town in which the law – a sheriff and a deputy and a few remote state troopers – are outnumbered by skinheads and survivalists.  They make little progress for several days, but then have some run-ins with the skinheads.  They kill a few and eventually are captured by them.  They are seconds away from dying when they are miraculously saved.  Who saves them?  Well, I won’t reveal that, but it is just one of several surprises that pop up as the body count continues to soar.  The deaths in this little town are coming so fast that bodies have to be imported from outside just to replenish the population.

It is all great action and fun, if you like death.  The whole thing was a bit over the top for me. But it did keep me turning the pages.

Spoiler alert: they kill all the bad guys, find Blue Man and return him to Washington, safe and sound, and their romance is rekindled.  But you knew that. That is just how Robie and Reel roll.

6 out of 10.