One of the ladies I work with loaned me Harlan Coben's Stay Close, which, while not someone I have read previously, still managed to write an interesting yarn.
The story centers on 3 people in particular, all of whom have a connection to an Atlantic Missing Persons case from 17 years prior. We have Megan, who 17 years ago went by Cassie, who worked as a stripper at La Créme. She's currently a suburban soccer mom of two kids, who lives 2 hours from Atlantic City. We have Ray, who was a photojournalist, but who now works for a fake paparazzi firm. (We literally meet him giving the paparazzi treatment to a 13 year old Jewish boy for his Bar Mitzvah.) And we have Detective Broome, who's seeking a missing person from 17 years ago.
Then we have several oddball supporting characters, like a police chief on the take, the father of another missing person, and two psychotic Christian Camp Counselors who like to plot campfire song orders before torturing people for information.
By the end, we know exactly what happened to the missing person, why it happened, and everyone more or less returns to their old lives a little bit wiser.
That's skipping a hell of a lot of detail, but it is a mystery of a sort.
Anyway, while I enjoyed this, the logic really requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Not to mention, much like Atlantic City, there's a seedy nature to the narrative that makes you want to wash grease off your hands every scene, like a white trash Lady MacBeth.
Would I read this author again? Probably. But he's not something I'd particularly seek out all that often.
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