Caught
Harlan Coben, 2010
Penguin Group USA
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451232700
Summary
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.
Seventeen-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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 4, 1962
• Raised—Livingston, New Jersey, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards
• Currently—lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey
Harlan Coben is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past (such as murders, fatal accidents, etc.) and often have multiple plot twists. Both series of Coben's books are set in and around New York and New Jersey, and some of the supporting characters in the two series have appeared in both.
Coben was born to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, but was raised and schooled in Livingston, New Jersey with childhood friend and future politician Chris Christie at Livingston High School. While studying political science at Amherst College, he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity with author Dan Brown. After Amherst, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather. He now lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.
Career
Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write. His first book was accepted when he was twenty-six but after publishing two stand-alone thrillers in his twenties (Play Dead in 1990 and Miracle Cure in 1991) he decided on a change of direction and began a series of thrillers featuring his character Myron Bolitar. The novels of the popular series follow the tales of a former basketball player turned sports agent (Bolitar), who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.
Coben has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award a Smelly Award (for writing about New Jersey) and an Anthony Award, and is the first writer to have received all three. He is also the first writer in more than a decade to be invited to write fiction for the New York Times op-ed page. He wrote a short story entitled "The Key to my Father," which appeared June 15, 2003.
In 2001 he released his first stand-alone thriller since the creation of the Myron Bolitar series in 1995, Tell No One, which went on to be his best selling novel to date. Film director Guillaume Canet made the book into a French thriller, Ne le dis à personne in 2006. Coben followed Tell No One with six more stand-alone novels. His 2008 novel Hold Tight became his first book to debut at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Although this is another stand-alone novel, Coben commented on his official website that certain key characters from The Woods will make brief appearances. His 2009 novel, Long Lost, featured a return of Myron Bolitar and also debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Caught, also a stand-alone thriller was published in 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Early in Caught, Harlan Coben’s crazily hyperactive new thriller, a wholesome teenage girl named Haley McWaid disappears from her happy New Jersey home.... Mr. Coben has the edge when it comes to popcorn pacing. His once-enveloping stories now move at a breakneck clip not unlike James Patterson’s, though at least Mr. Coben still writes chapters longer than three pages. Since anything and everything can happen in the berserk world of Caught, none of the suspense carries much weight, and no character has time to become particularly sympathetic.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
It may already be too late for this review to be written. I finished "Caught," the new thriller by that galloping bestseller-machine Harlan Coben, only 24 hours before sitting down at my computer, but already some details of its intricate plot are eluding my grasp. No doubt that's mostly my fault, but it may also have something to do with the brain-taxing plethora of secrets held and coverups performed by inhabitants of the New Jersey town where the action takes place.
Dennis Drabelle - Washington Post
It is possible for a life to go so badly wrong that it can never be right again?... The opening chapter of this excellent thriller is a salutary warning of how fragile civilised life can seem.... Coben resolves all this with twists and turns of plot that he has carefully prepared, but in the end what we take away from this book is less his ingenuity than his wisdom.
Roz Kaveney - Independent (UK)
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.
Publishers Weekly
Teenager Haley McWaid doesn't come home one night, and when months go by without a word her parents assume the worst. Reporter Wendy Tynes conducts a sexual predator sting, working with the local police to capture men on camera and later televising the footage. Her latest suspect is community social worker Dan Mercer, and those who know him can't believe he's guilty. Tynes begins to question her instincts, but she carries on with her investigation, which reveals a shocking link between Mercer and the missing Haley, with aftershocks that will destroy a community. Verdict: Coben is in top form exposing the dark underside of modern suburbia. The story will chill readers, especially parents of teenagers. Complex and intricate, this is his best book since Promise Me. Don't escape, get Caught.
Library Journal
Along with his Myron Bolitar series, Coben's stand-alone novels have cemented his reputation as a solid writer and a relentless plotter of high-octane entertainment.... With his latest effort—though, admittedly, a generally slower-paced effort with weaker characterization than in other novels—Coben delivers solid entertainment. Again.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Caught:
1. Is Harlan Coben able to juggle all the balls he's thrown into the air in this novel? Some critics have suggested there are there simply too many characters and mysteries to keep track of...or to cohere into a taut thriller. Do you agree or disagree? Were you able to follow all the twists and turns and stay on top of the storyline?
2. Talk about the way in which Coben juxtaposes ordinary, cozy domestic details with forces of evil in the larger society. Why? What might be his purpose as an author in using this narrative technique (which he does in many of his thrillers)?
3. Of the main characters, whom do you find most sympathetic—and why? Is it Wendy Tynes, Dan Mercer, Marcia McWaid...or others?
4. What do you think about Wendy's tactics of entrapment? Is she complicit in what happens to Dan—even if what happens is for a good cause?
5. What kind of pressures does Wendy, as a female, face at the TV station? How did you feel when she was fired from her job?
6. Talk about Wendy's coming to terms with the woman driver who killed her husband? What does she come to understand?
7. The book examines the role of TV, the Internet, and social media in creating public perception. What does the book suggest is the impact of all this high-speed communication on our lives, our identities, or the truth?
8. Of all the various plot strands and mysteries—a pedophile, an embezzling scheme, a college boys’ conspiracy, a missing girl, and a dead hooker—which was most intriguing or compelling? Were you ahead of the curve in figuring out how they all came together?
9. What about Jenna and her husband? What other course of action could they/should they have taken? What would have been the consequences?
10. Does this novel deliver? Does it offer a suspenseful plot and engaging characters? Was the ending a surprise...or predictable? Were all the loose ends tied up satisfactorily? Have you read other Coben books...if so, how does this one compare?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)