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HOLD TIGHT
by Harlan Coben
Dutton, April 2008
416 pages
$26.95
ISBN: 0525950605


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

HOLD TIGHT is pretty much like any Harlan Coben standalone you've ever read . . . middle class family rocked by secrets who then see their comfortable existence ripped apart.

This time out we have Mike Baye (pronounced as in goodbye) and his wife Tia. He's a doctor, she's a lawyer, and they have the required two lovely offspring. Except said offspring aren't awfully lovely at the moment, as 16-year-old son Adam is behaving bizarrely.

So our angst-ridden parents call in a friendly neighbourhood computer geek and get him to install spyware on Adam's computer that will record every keystroke he makes. And yes, of course this paranoia levers open up a large and smelly can of worms where bodies are strewn liberally round New Jersey.

There's no doubting that Coben always delivers tightly-plotted and fluid page-turners, and HOLD TIGHT is certainly a fast and engrossing enough read. Coben's not exactly at the stage of phoning it in yet, but, but . . .

His standalones depend very much on the reader empathising with the family, and this is where your mileage may vary, as they say on the internet. In HOLD TIGHT in particular, the smugness really grates. Mike is the put-upon all-American guy, while Tia's main focus appears to be herself. I suspect Coben wants us to sympathise with her in the scenes where her professionalism at work is compromised. Suffice it to say I didn't.

Come to think of it, while Coben can provide us with clean-cut heroes from here to Christmas, he's not so convincing with the female characters – they tend to be sour older women or Mrs Seemingly Perfect who in fact isn't. So let's hear it for attorney Hester Crimstein. I'm sure we're supposed to see her as the raddled lesbian boss from hell. In reality she has more personality than the rest of the characters put together.

Paul Copeland, the star of Coben's previous book THE WOODS, has a supporting role here. And there's a mention too for Esperanza from the Myron Bolitar series (come to think of it, there always seems to be someone in the standalones who knows her!)

So HOLD TIGHT is an enjoyable enough read if you want entertaining and don't take the book too seriously. But I wish Coben could transfer some of the warmth that he manages in the Myron series to his increasingly formulaic standalones.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, March 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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