The Innocent, by Harlan Coben

This one starts off with Matt Hunter, a guy who's in a perfectly happy relationship with his wife, receiving a video message from her on his phone which shows her in a hotel room with another man. When he tries to get in touch with her he can't: what's going on?

Sounds pretty much par for the course as the starting point for another one from Harlan. And the tale unwinds in a fairly familiar way: turns out there are various dark secrets from a past that come back to haunt the present. The slight difference here was that we're not kept guessing very long about what's going on: bits of the story are revealed which means that by about half-way through the book you feel you might be able to piece together what's happened. And Matt's wife comes clean to him, which means that for the second half of the book they're pretty much in things together.

Obviously there are more twists as the book goes on, but it was quite nice to have the hero being not completely isolated as he tries to solve the mystery.

This one was read by Richard Ferrone - he of the Prey series, but although he was typically good, I don't think he was as good with this book as he is with Sandord's: the writing style of Coben is not so taut, and the style is not quite so cynical. Still, always a pleasure to hear Ferrone read.

Reasonably good, but nothing special.

Completed : 5-Jul-2006 (audiobook)

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