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PROMISE ME
Written by
HARLAN COBEN

It began with a promise at 2.17am. When the phone rings on Myron Bolitar's nightstand at the other end of the line is Aimee Biel - a frightened teenager who has called the one adult who had promised to help her if she ever got into trouble. But Myron's help will not be enough. Stumbling from his Manhattan bed, he races down to pick her up from a cold street corner and take her back to safety. Against his better judgment, she persuades him to drop her at an unknown address in the suburbs and this is a mistake that he lives to regret, for Aimee's final wave from a darkened porch is not the end of the story. She turns and disappears into the night -and apparently off the face of the earth. Driven by guilt and the desperation of her family, Myron decides to break his vow of six years and get involved in the search himself. What he doesn't realise is just how far people will go to protect the ones they love.

Everything that a Crime fiction reader could ever possibly want is within the pages of this book. The dialogue is Connelly-esque in its tightness and holds such a natural rhythm that the reader becomes a virtual eavesdropper. The descriptive prose has been so vividly drawn, it is as though we have been invited to come along for the ride and so can “see” where we are and what is about to transpire. As for the characters, good and bad alike, well, it’s like meeting with old friends – or running into old enemies – such are the feelings that are stirred

The theme of the novel is simple – as it usually is with the best of novels – and, here, is delivered and adhered to with such clear mindedness that when the denouement arrives, it is not so much as a surprise but more a physical shock to the system.

Harlan Coben has now written eight Myron Bolitar novels and this is as good a place to start as any if you’ve not read any of the others. The blanks in the back-story are filled in with out being heavy handed, whilst the peripheral characters have all been drawn with such attention to detail, the reader wants to know what they have been up to in the interceding six years as much as they do about Myron.

This indeed is a welcome return of a well-defined hero and Harlan Coben can expect to roundly applauded from all quarters for doing so at long last.
9/10

http://www.harlancoben.com/

Order this book online - Linghams Booksellers

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