While it is still propelled by plot over character, the plot threads spring from (and in some cases define) the relationships among the players. This book marks a clear step in that evolution. Over time, his books have moved more into social and family issues (although Hold Tight does share a major character with the world of Coben’s longtime hero, Myron Bolitar, and gives Myron a passing nod). To be sure, a few coincidences help the plot along, but their convenience is lost in the tension as the threads come together.Ĭoben has been a major force in mystery writing since shortly after he left Amherst. The discovery of how the pieces fit, along with some unforeseen cause-and-effect relationships, drive quick page turns. As Hold Tight unfolds, all of these stories eventually relate to one another, making the book a whodunit, a whydunit and a what’dshedo all at the same time-and the list of questions only builds as the tempo quickens. The boy next door has cancer, another boy is a recent suicide, unidentified bodies begin turning up around town, the Bayes’ daughter befriends an outcast classmate, and at 46, Mike finds it increasingly hard to play hockey without aches and pains.

And thus begins the main plot of Harlan Coben’s latest bestselling novel, Hold Tight.Īround the Baye family play the dramas of modern suburbia. Faced with an increasingly sullen and detached son and unable to find an explanation, they decide, reluctantly, to monitor his computer activity. Add to that the electron-enabled menace of online pedophiles, and a parent could be excused for spending all day, every day, filtering what his or her child sees. Today’s parents face not the occasional magazine issue, but a daily tsunami of e-mails, images and free-range Internet mayhem, all delivered direct to a child’s bedroom. Only later did I learn that my father, deciding that the special issue, titled “Love and the Automobile,” was too racy for a 13-year-old, had confiscated it. $26.95 hardcover.Īs a young subscriber to Motor Trend magazine, I was befuddled when one issue simply failed to arrive. December 2009: What to Read When by Pam Allyn '84īy Harlan Coben ’84.November 2009: On Poets and Poetry by William H.

October 2009: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell '95.

September 2009: Rules for Old Men Waiting by Peter Pouncey.

August 2009: The End of Overeating by David Kessler '73.

June 2009: Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus '61.

May 2009: Hold Tight by Harlan Coben '84.

April 2009: Passing Strange by Marni Sandweiss.

March 2009: Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian '82.February 2009: Loneliness as a Way of Life by Tom Dumm.January 2009: Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein '88.

Hold tight harlan coben series