Pranks are supposed to be fun. They seldom are. They're cruel. The victim invariably suffers. When complaining, he or she is admonished: "Can't you take a joke?" A pail of water falling on the head when opening the door. Being told that a loved one has had an accident. A snake put in a car. Hilarious?
A day doesn't go by when pranks aren't being pulled: "Didn't you just love the look on her face when she sipped the vinegar I substituted for wine?" Youngsters are adept at it. Ought they be punished?
Yank author Harlan Coben focuses on a fatal prank and its dire consequences in Don't Let Go. As with many of his crime thrillers, it's set in New Jersey. His carried-over literary creation is homicide police detective Nap Dumas. Single, moneyed from an inheritance, he plays the filed.
He is still grieving the death of his twin brother Leo, who, with girlfriend Diana, committed suicide in their small upcountry town. Even after 15 years, its unlikelihood nags at him. Leo loved living too much; no less did he love the police chief's daughter. Still, a train did run them over.
Hardly coincidental, their high school classmates have been dying off. Mysteriously, a video made that night turns up. It's Diana running wild in the woods. Trained and experienced as an investigator, Nap isn't above playing by his own rules. Justice must be done, even if it means turning vigilante. Disregarding suicide, he seeks murders.
The school had a secret club. Nap eschewed it, others didn't. Mischief was their game, Leo its acknowledged leader. Learning that Diana intended to break up with him, he devised a fiendish prank. Slipped LSD, the drugged girl was carried into the woods.
As they watched, doing nothing to help her, Diana awoke out of her mind, tore off her clothes and ran. A panicked guard shot her. The club members dispersed. Who is picking them off?
Among them is Maura, Nap's high school sweetheart. Can he save her life from the murderer locating and killing the others?
Cohen, noted for the twists and turns in his stories, doesn't disappoint here. Whether readers disapprove of his sense of vigilante justice, they can't help liking his plotting and dialogue.
True or false?
It is no secret that every country has a secret intelligence agency. What cloak-and-dagger authors profess to know is that within them is an even more secret bureau. It's so hush-hush that it doesn't officially exist. Its agents deal with the highest matter of national security.
Its greatest fear is that there may be a traitor within. Its chief is naturally paranoid, if not the traitor him/herself. An operation gone wrong has the suspicious agents wondering who to put the blame on. The chief isn't above forcing the suspect to confess. The public isn't meant to be aware of this.
Yank Stephanie Meyer's The Chemist is a unique novel in that on the title page the publisher distances himself from the realism of the plot. It is up to the reader to decide.
Alex -- her most recent name -- was a good agent, but didn't much like the confining environment and resigned. Being a doctor specialising in trauma is more satisfactory. That several of her patients are mafiosi is more exciting than dangerous. They teach her a thing or two.
Her being on the outside is more than the agency can tolerate. Alex knows too much. What if she spills their secrets? Eliminating her would solve the problem. Escaping an attempt on her life, she runs for it. Along the way, she picks up a lover. Daniel joins her.
The plot picks up when one of her former colleagues is nabbed by the chief and incarcerated in a DC safe house and beaten to within an inch of his life. Meyer leaves nothing to the imagination, describing this torture. How Alex and Daniel rescue him is a bit of a stretch.
Among her other feats is bringing Daniel to life after he's shot through the heart. As heroines go, Alex is a miracle worker. In the penultimate chapter climax, the chief gets his just desserts. For some reason a non sequitur story is added.
This reviewer hasn't read Meyer's previous eight books -- which include the Twilight series -- but if The Chemist, at more than 500 pages, is anything to go by, she overwrites. The plot doesn't call for more than 350.
