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Typically if a mystery has a weakness, it often comes at the end of the novel, with an unsatisfying ending. If there's one thing Harlan Coben does right in this book, however, it is the ending. The book has a very satisfying series of twists to wrap up what is generally a weak storyline.
With echoes of TELL NO ONE, this book focuses on what can't be true. A spouse (in this case, former Special Ops helicopter pilot Maya) sees her dead husband in her nanny cam. Is it the result of the PTSD that she's experiencing from her time overseas? Is someone (that is, her husband's very wealthy family) trying to manipulate her? Or is her husband still alive?
This is the dilemma that Maya and readers of FOOL ME ONCE are left to uncover. The unfortunate thing is that Maya is not necessarily a sympathetic character. She seems cold and not really even very lifelike. Perhaps because she is ex-military, Coben thought she would behave like "one of the guys." Yet scenes in which, for example, she has a cold beer after a hard work-out don't ring true to any woman (military or not) that this reader knows. The fact that Maya doesn't have any pictures of her two-year-old daughter in her home also strikes a strange note.
Then there's the competing storylines of what could have led to the death of her husband and her sister, or even the death of her husband's brother at a young age before Maya was around. There's plenty of family secrets to go around, but piling one atop another doesn't necessarily make for a richer storyline.
That said, this is a very quick read. Coben knows what he's doing, and he incorporates plenty of modern-day tools (a WikiLeaks-like figure, for example) to propel his tale forward. And then there's that great ending, which redeems the larger story to a considerable degree. This isn't the best of Coben, but even so, it's perfect readable if not satisfying as a whole.
§ Christine Zibas is a freelance writer and former director of publications for a Chicago nonprofit.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, March 2016
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