Caught is a quick read. It grabbed my attention in the prologue and kept me reading. That’s not to say it was a great book, but it never let up. There was twist after turn and a batch of characters to keep track of.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter who tracks down sexual predators, sets up sting operations, and exposes them on national television. Dan Mercer is the latest pedophile who she catches. He gets off on a technicality, helped by a flamboyant lawyer who only makes one appearance in the book, but Dan’s life is essentially ruined. Wendy starts to wonder if he was ever actually guilty, though. Meanwhile, a teenage girl in the neighborhood, pretty, talented, a good girl, has been missing for months and the police have exhausted all their leads.

In addition to the missing, potentially kidnapped girl and a falsely accused man, there’s a murder, a vigilante, an embezzlement scheme, a group of unemployed middle-aged men, four Harvard roommates whose lives are all being destroyed, teenage drinking, internet rumors, and someone getting shot in the knee caps. Wendy as reporter and amateur sleuth has a lot to look into. Oh, and there’s her personal life. She a single mom to a teenage son, the drunk driver who killed her husband is begging her for forgiveness, she loses her job and is accused of sleeping with her boss.

Like I said, there’s a lot going on, almost too much, but Coben does manage to wrap it all up in the end. No questions are left unanswered. I flew right through it and enjoyed it, but it’s probably not one I’ll remember in the long run.

I particularly liked a couple of things. First, I think Coben has a pretty good feel for teenagers, for what they do, how they sometimes act. Second, the issue of the internet ruining people’s reputations is fairly timely, and if nothing else this book will make you look at things you read on-line with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Published March 23, 2010 by Dutton Adult
388 pages

4 out of 5 stars

Purchase at Amazon or an Indie bookstore.

Challenge: Mystery and Suspense

I borrowed my copy from the library and the above is my honest opinion.

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