Caught »

In his mysteries -- many of which star sports agent Myron Bolitar -- Harlan Coben leavens the intrigue with a surprise ingredient: humor. The result: books as fun to read as they are to solve, with distinct and colorful characters the reader is always happy to visit with, again and again.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a fast-paced, emotion-packed novel about guilt, grief, and our capacity to forgive 17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate-and nationally televised-sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben's trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can't trust her own instincts about this story-or the motives of the people around her.

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Coben (Hold Tight) has a knack for taking everyday nightmares and playing with life’s endless “what ifs,” as shown in this stand-alone thriller, a tightly choreographed dance of guilt and innocence, forgiveness and retribution. Frank Tremont, a world-weary, near-retirement investigator for New Jersey’s Essex County, has to face his failure to solve his last case—the disappearance of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, Dan Mercer stands accused of being a sexual predator thanks to the ambush journalism of Wendy Tynes, a tabloid TV reporter, who must cope with her husband’s death caused by a drunken driver as well as reckon with the possibility of Mercer’s innocence. When Tynes finds a link between a father of one of Mercer’s alleged victims and others felled by scandal, she could become a killer’s next victim. If the wealth of characters dilutes the suspense, Coben gives readers lots to think about when judging rights and wrongs. 500,000 first printing; 12-city author tour. (Mar.)