Hold Tight — Harlan Coben
Mike and Tina Baye are worried about their son, Adam. He’s withdrawn from them lately, and it’s much more than the usual teenage, “leave me alone” behavior. His best friend recently committed suicide, and Adam has lost interest in all the things he used to love. Out of worry, Mike and Tina decide they need to know more about their son than he’s willing to tell them. So they install spy software on his computer and monitor who he talks to, what sites he surfs, what he reads. They discover that he’s involved in a crowd that does a lot of drinking and drugs. But what they learn that frightens them the most is the message someone sends Adam advising him to “just stay quiet and all safe.”
But Adam is afraid, and he runs off when he discovers his parents have been spying on him. Mike and Tina are frantic. They try to locate him using the GPS on his cell phone, and just as Mike gets close, he’s attacked and hospitalized by a group of men who don’t want him finding his son. And when they start to question all the people their son is known to have talked to recently, they come up against one stone wall after another. Mike and Tina soon learn that maybe Adam didn’t just run away. Maybe he was taken.
I liked this book quite a bit. I thought the diverse cast of characters that all seem to be separate and unconnected to the main plot were woven together smartly in the end. The book opens with a particularly gruesome event that seems to stand alone and make no sense to the major story. You wonder when it will come together, and how it possibly could when, just like that… it all does, and it makes sense.
I picture Coben with a giant plot board of sticky notes and string connecting them in front of him when he maps out his stories. He’d have to have some sort of system in place to keep it all sorted out. The guy’s great at plot, I will give him that. But I don’t think the writing was particularly great this time (word choices, phrasings, dialogue). But hey… I’ve read a lot of books that have been bestsellers that weren’t well-written. Goes to show you that it’s the story, the idea behind it all, that makes it a great read. You can be a technically gifted writer, have a way with words, but if you don’t have a story that grabs attention, you’ve got nothing.
I’ve never read anything by this author, and this novel really intrigues me. I love the way you described the plotting. It’s a shame the writing wasn’t as wonderful as it could have been.
Comment by Stephanie — August 15, 2010 @ 7:23 am
Yes, I’ve been on real Coben kick lately. I tend to do that with authors I discover and enjoy — read everything all at once. Of course, that might not be the best thing to do, because I find that some authors really do find that one formula that worked for them and then use it over and over again for all their novels. All the stories start to seem like the same one, but with different character names ;) At least if you leave some time between reading the novels, it isn’t as noticeable!
Comment by Kristina — August 15, 2010 @ 8:35 am