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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben
Detective Sami Kierce series #2. Mystery, thriller, police procedural. Can be read as a stand-alone.
Former detective Sami Kierce is an unlicensed private investigator now. One evening as he’s teaching his night school class, there is a visitor at the back watching him. Though he hasn’t seen her in more than twenty years, he recognizes his girlfriend Anna. A woman that was dead the morning he woke up with a knife in his hand. She runs as soon as she realizes he recognizes her and Sami chases after her. He still has nightmares from those days and he needs to know what really happened.
🎧 I alternated between an ebook and audiobook. The performance by Vikas Adam is superb. The tension comes through clearly during the story as does his love for his wife. The mystery is easy to follow on the audio but there are a lot of characters to keep straight. Often an ebook is easier to go back and search for a name which is why I like to read both formats at the same time. There are some timeline changes via memories but those are easy to discern. I did listen to this between. 1.5 and 1.7 to more closely match my reading and conversation speed.
Twists and brutal subject topics.
Riveting and engrossing. Always a good storyteller.
I was gifted a copy of this from NetGalley and Hachette Audio.
Well, Harlan Coben has done it again. No surprise there, of course. Just
when you think he couldn’t possibly get any better, he does just that. This tense fast paced thriller will leave you breathless to the very end.
How can you not love Sami Kierce? Yes, he’s a disgraced detective who now teaches night classes to a group of armchair detectives. But, he’s truly a good guy. He loves his wife and young son and just wants to do good in the world. That world is turned upside down when he sees a woman he met in Spain more than 20 years ago, whom he had a brief relationship with and woke up to find her dead, thinking he killed her. With the help of his former partner and students Sami must dust off his detective skills and find out who this woman is and what new nightmare he’s about to walk into. With the superb storytelling and masterful twists Harlan Coben is known for, you will need to put all else on hold and read Nobody’s Fool. Coben is an author not to be missed.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben is a police procedural led by a man, Sami Kierce, who was no longer a policeman. He had been asked to leave because of behavior outside police procedures. He deserved it; he often did not think before he acted. He did a variety of things to keep his family safe, including teaching a class on sleuthing, to which he had a cadre of regulars. One night someone slipped in he didn’t recognize, until he did. He had known her twenty years earlier when he had been just out of college and on a trek across Europe. He had woken up one day to find her dead body next to him and a knife in his hand. In a panic he ran to the police. When he finally convinced one to return to the apartment with him, nothing was there. He called his father who advised him to get a flight out to the United States immediately. It didn’t matter where. Now, here she was. The sharing that night had been about surveillance devices and he had one in his hand which he stuck in her pocket as she rushed away. Where that led him is almost beyond belief.
Her family was rich; very rich. He was turned away, aggressively, by security, so was interested when his lawyer called him with an interesting proposal from them. He went, and the Arthur, the lawyer, was waiting for him. That started an investigation that lead in and around many things in his past. It involved his dead partner who had also been his fiancee; his wife and son; a kidnapping and return to the family eleven years later; as well as all kinds of other twists and turns. What a good book. It is the first Coben book I have read and I am asking myself, “Why?” Sami was an interesting character with a backstory and a current story, and stories in between. The plot was complex and well-thought-out. The assistance Sami received from a variety of people was heart-warming. And the conclusion and the after-conclusion where both things no one had seen coming. What a good book!
I was invited to read Nobody’s Fool by Grand Central Publishing. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #GrandCentralPublishing #HarlanCoben #NobodysFool
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It may be hard to believe, since I read so much, but Nobody’s Fool is only my second book by Harlan Coben. Given that he’s written SO many books, it truly surprised me. Anyway… Nobody’s Fool was a very engaging mystery and I’m glad I read/listened to it!
Sami Kierce is the main character, a former NYPD detective who was forced out of the department due to problematic behavior in a couple of cases. So he’s scrambling to make a living for himself, his wife and baby son, by taking on various low-level private investigations, such as surveilling cheating husbands. He also teaches a sort of adult education detective class on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. That class is filled with a wide variety of “interesting” people. I loved that Sami referred to them mostly by nicknames, such as Gary The Golfer, Leisure Suit Lenny, and a few women he calls the Pink Panthers. (It actually helped me remember who was who, as opposed to just a list of names.) I really enjoyed Sami; he has a good sense of humor and it was a nice change of pace to read a main character who grew up in New Jersey of Pakistani heritage.
The book opens with some scenes from 20-odd years earlier, when he was backpacking in Europe with some of his college buddies (whom he refers to as the “lax bros”, i.e. lacrosse players), before starting med school. In Spain he meets and has a brief affair with a young woman named Anna. The publisher’s blurb gives this away, so it isn’t a spoiler: he wakes up next to Anna, who is dead and he’s holding a bloody knife! He runs, basically. And he never goes to med school; instead he becomes a police officer.
Fast forward those 20-odd years and a woman shows up at his class and he just knows it’s Anna, older of course. When she turns and runs instead of talking to him, he follows her. Most of the book involves figuring out how Anna could still be alive. I enjoyed how some of his more promising students helped him in this effort. Another thread is the release from prison of a man he helped convict, a man he believes killed his then-fiancee. Because of his checkered past, his lawyer has gotten that guy out of prison.
I mostly listened to the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Vikas Adam. I sped through this book, not wanting to stop listening.
If you enjoy a fast-paced thriller with some good twists and great local atmosphere, check out Nobody’s Fool.
Thank you to Hachette Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook and to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Blood, Gaslighting
Moderate: Drug abuse, Trafficking, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes