Caught by Harlan Coben - 3 stars ***This is another book off the famous 50p shelf at the pub where I work. The plot begins by introducing Dan, a youth worker, who goes to meet a young girl he believes to have been abused, only for a camera crew to jump out and accuse him of grooming her for sex in a chat room. With evidence and child pornography found on his computer, he hasn't a leg to stand on but manages to gain acquittal and goes on the run. At the same time, a young girl, Haley Coben, goes missing.
The woman who caught Dan on camera, journalist Wendy Tynes, is the protagonist in the story, and is approached soon after by Ed Grayson, the father of a child Dan has also supposedly abused. He wants Wendy to help him to kill Dan, but she refuses. Soon afterwards, she is tricked into meeting Dan, leading Grayson to him, where he kills him in front of her. The rest of the book is spent with Wendy trying to find Haley in order to absolve her feelings of guilt over Dan's death, and also investigating into a conspiracy theory that she believes she is a part of.
This is a well written book, if a little slow starting, but about halfway in the action really kicks in, and it has a twisted ending that makes it worth the wait. Overall it is pretty basic in terms of literary devices, but now and again there are some really good descriptive passages that resonate because they are so unexpected:'They were sprawled on the den furniture as only teenage boys can, as though they'd removed their skeletons, hung them in a nearby closet, and slid to a collapse against whatever upholstery was nearby.'
'Did tragedy cause fissures, open them wider - or did tragedy merely turn on the light so you could see the fissure that had always been there? Maybe we live in darkness, blinded by the smile and façade of goodness. Maybe tragedy just takes away the blinders.'
I'd recommend this as a thriller that isn't too complex or taxing, but has a good storyline that keeps you hooked throughout.
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