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A Painful Search

A review of the novel No Second Chance written by Harlan Coban

I read Tell No One by Harlan Coben several months ago and remembered liking his writing style when I saw No Second Chance on the library shelves. Harlan is a very good writer who knows how to draw you in and keep you interested with twists and turns in the plot, but the ending of Tell No One lacked the punch that I expected and hoped for as I approached the final chapters.

As I began reading No Second Chance I felt a strong sense of familiarity and wondered if indeed it had been this novel that I'd read earlier. It wasn't but in both stories the hero is not long married and their wives are murdered in mysterious circumstances. I couldn't help thinking that Harlan maybe hates women or wives enough to make them victims but I pushed that thought from my mind as I read on.

Dr Marc Seidman is a plastic surgeon, one of the good guys who treats the needy and travels to the third world or war torn countries. His wife Monica is the daughter of a rich man. One morning Marc and Monica are shot in their home and only Marc is left alive, but is severely injured and initially expected to die. Twelve days later Marc wakes up in hospital with no memory of what has happened and finds that their 6 month old baby daughter Tara has been missing since that morning.

There are no clues at the crime scene and no apparent reason for the crime. Kidnapping Tara for ransom is the only logical explanation but no demands are made until the day Marc leaves hospital and is taken to visit his father in law. There he finds that a box with a clipping of Tara's hair and a demand for $2,000,000 has been delivered. The hair has been DNA tested and found to be Tara's and Marc is ordered to deliver the ransom by himself and without informing the police.

Marc takes the money given by his father in law and waits at his own home until the kidnappers call with a meeting point. Unfortunately the police learn about the demand and get in on the act. The money is taken but Tara isn’t returned to Marc, all he gets is a message telling him ‘no second chance’.

Desperately disappointed, Marc gradually returns as much as possible to a normal life but doesn’t give up hope that his daughter is alive and well. 18 months later his father in law receives another ransom demand for $2,000,000 along with another lock of hair and a message asking if he wants a second chance. After DNA testing it’s found that the hair is from a 2 year old child and a match of Tara’s. At least Marc knows that is daughter is still alive but can he swap a further $2,000,000 for his daughter without the police and FBI finding out and messing things up again?

At this point the pace of the novel became strong. Marc enlists the help of an ex girlfriend Rachael who just happens to be ex FBI. The question is can he trust her? She retired under dubious circumstances and Marc discovers that she had hung around his practice not long before the death of his wife and kidnapping of his daughter. Could she have had something to do with what has happened to Marc, could it be Marc himself as the police begin to think, or could it be somebody else entirely? With the police closely on his tail, the kidnappers always seem to be one step ahead of Marc as he follows clues in the hunt for his daughter and the killer. He begins to suspect that somebody close to him is leaking information but who can’t he trust?

I won’t divulge any more of the storyline, but there are lots of twists and turns to add enough suspense to make me want to keep on reading. Although I guessed whodunit early on, I didn’t guess the reasons behind the crime and it’s aftermath and I changed my mind several times throughout. The lead up to the end was excellent enough to keep me on edge and although the ending was a bit lukewarm it was better than the final chapters of Tell No One. To me No Second Chance was altogether a better read than Tell No One and I felt that this award winning author has improved from good to better than good in the 2 years since Tell No One was published and look forward to reading his future work.

One teeny disappointment was that I would have liked to see two of the characters enlarged upon a bit more. Lydia and Heshy are a gruesome twosome described well enough to make my skin crawl. The thought of that pair in the background added more suspense to the story, whether they had anything to do with the crime or not!

Marc was a likeable and believable character. His grief at the loss of his daughter and wife was portrayed well and made me want to find out if he gets Tara back. He is quite an ordinary guy really, but his search brings out a toughness and tenacity in him that you can only admire.

I was interested to read that Harlan Coben doesn’t start with an outline to a novel. He just plans a beginning and an end, with the core happening as he goes along. I suspected that during reading because you get quite far into the book before you see that it is heading in any particular direction. With some writers the result can be messy with too many loose ends, in No Second chance the loose ends are tied up despite there being so many twists.

Highly recommended if you like an intelligent thriller with enough twists to keep you guessing right through the book.

ISBN: 0752842803