Harlan Coben Goes Fishing for Red Herrings and Catfish: "Missing You"

Missing You - Harlan Coben

Kat Donovan is third-generation NYPD, having followed in the footsteps (and bar stool) of her father and her father's father. Nearing forty, Kat's still single and not looking very hard. When her best friend gives her a free membership at an on-line dating service, Kat’s underwhelmed at first; underwhelmed by the long roster of shallow, needy men with digital versions of bad singles-bar come-ons. But that’s before she stumbles over Jeff’s profile…

Eighteen years ago Kat’s life had changed forever the moment her father’s partner appeared at her door: Dad was dead, murdered. Weeks later, her fiancé had dumped her and left, never to be seen again – until tonight, when his all-too familiar face appears on her laptop screen as she scrolls through JustMyType.com profiles. After one too many shots of Jack, she reaches out to him…

…and somehow finds herself entangled in a web of lies and death. Even as Kat finds new evidence in her father’s murder almost two decades ago, she is also drawn into a sinister world whose doorway is the image of her long-lost love. Aided by her playboy partner and a tech-savvy nineteen-year-old with a missing mom, Kat goes on the hunt. The real question is which she will find first: the missing mom, the missing fiancé, of her father’s killer – because Kat Donovan won’t quit until she has all the answers.

With Myron Bolitar on hiatus (referenced indirectly by the mention of his pal Win’s unexplained absence), Harlan Coben fires up that plot machine brain of his to concoct a sinister tale filled with fish; both catfish and red herrings inhabit the waters of Missing You. Coben somehow manages to braid Kat’s three essential quandaries – missing mom, dead dad, and long-lost lover – into a single plot without damaging a reader’s credulity at all. Along the way he manages to drop in the fascinating cast of characters, people like a woman so gorgeous men “would walk on their knees through busted glass, just so they could get next to her” and a cross-dressing homeless genius who teaches a by-invitation only yoga class behind the Central Park boathouse. Coben’s good enough that readers simply take such personalities in stride.

His central plot is, of course, the missing mom plot; the only one in which he invests real characters – this one’s more than merely a vehicle for Kat’s searches for her father’s killer and for Jeff; it’s also a horrific plot concept of the very type at which Coben excels. Readers will encounter more than a little brutality, as well as another signature Coben touch: dissonant characters, in this case a troubling (but recognizable) juxtaposition of kindness with cruelty in the same thug. When they're combined with his wicked sense of humor and more than one trenchant observation about the inanity of modern pop culture, the skillful characterizations and plotting make for vintage Coben.

Missing You is full of plot twists, although for some reason the biggest twist of all seemed to have been telegraphed early. Suffice it to say that I wasn't surprised by that final plot twist – the circumstances, perhaps, but not the gigantic revelation. That did not spoil the novel for me, though it was disappointing enough to knock off a star in the overall rating. Coben fans are a sturdy lot, however, and should have no problem at all getting into this standalone and getting in deep.