Caught is Captivating!

Reviewed by Doris

Caught by Harlan Coben (F COB Main; SSB F COB Main; and CD F COB Main)
Harlan Coben creates plots that twist, turn, take your around corners, and drop you on your head. His stories tend to dash along, pulling you head over heels with them and leaving you a bit breathless at the ending. Caught certainly lives up to that pattern.

Do you ever watch that MSNBC series where the sexual predators are caught when they respond to emails from what they believe are underage girls? Coben takes that premise and develops it into a story that grips you from the beginning. Haley McWaid is a great kid. She has a great family and parents who are involved and devoted. She disappears one night, and three months later no one still has a clue what happened to her. Wendy Tynes is the TV host of “Caught in the Act,” and she is driven to bring down the predators who feast on the kids in her community. Dan Mercer is a youth counselor who works with troubled kids, but he may not be the caring, outstanding citizen he seems. Is Dan connected to Haley somehow? Is Wendy doing the right thing setting up the predators and outing them to the public? What if she is wrong and the “predator” is really innocent? Coben puts all the possibilities into play, and you question every move made by every character.

Dan Mercer shows up at the house where Wendy and her film crew wait for him. There have been a series of emails to Wendy from an anonymous source accusing Dan of being a predator. When taken down by the police Dan says he came to the house to help a troubled young woman who approached him at the youth center where he counsels teens. He denies he has done anything wrong, but there is evidence to the contrary. Wendy has to go by the evidence as do the police, but Wendy’s gut is telling her something just doesn’t click. The more she investigates, the more she questions. Cyber sabotage, old grudges, new methods of tracking predators, a grieving father bent on “justice,” and threats on Wendy’s life and that of her son all factor in to the mix.

Harlan Coben is one of the best of the contemporary thriller authors at creating tension and Caught builds tension with each chapter. It will have you questioning everything. His characters are engaging—some good, some nasty—but all of them keep you tied in knots. Who are the good guys? Are the bad guys even scarier than you thought? Is there a conspiracy? Has Wendy brought a predator and possible murderer to justice or destroyed the life of a good man? You will not know until the very last page of the book, so don’t read ahead! This one is a winner—my favorite so far of the new books from late summer and early fall.