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| The unusual suspect |
| Anoothi Vishal / New Delhi Jul 18, 2009, 00:07 IST |
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He may be unknown in India but award-winning crime writer Harlan Coben has a huge following in the US and UK. Now, Coben's compelling creation Myron Bolitar is back, after a long gap, with Long Lost. Anoothi Vishal rediscovers him.
If Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Ruth Rendell make up your list of best-ever crime reads, it’s time to discover some younger, contemporary writing in this genre. And there’s no one like Harlan Coben, the New Jersey-based best-selling writer, to get you to keep turning the pages till the very end. Despite a huge following in America (and the UK) — he now has deals with Hollywood, a sure sign of popular success — Coben remains largely unknown to those of us in India who like to keep the skeletons tumbling, the spies chasing and root for Bondesque intrigues (including the love affairs). But this summer offers us a good chance to finally make an acquaintance with Coben — as well as Myron Bolitar, his former-basketball pro-turned sports agent character who solves cases involving high-profile clients, who makes his fictional appearance after three long years.
Long Lost, that came out earlier this year, is the ninth Bolitar novel; the previous, Promise Me, was published in 2006, though Coben has been writing almost a book a year since the Bolitar series debuted in 1995 with Deal Breaker. That proved to be a turning point for the author, who had earlier attempted a couple of other stand-alone books. But it was only when he created the slightly hesitant, emotionally vulnerable, Yoo-hoo guzzling (a chocolate flavoured soft-drink that traces its origins to the 1920s’ New Jersey), staying at home-with parents-bachelor that Coben really found his feet and popular pulse.
Since then and in between his Bolitar books, Coben has not only written some exceptional stand-alone thrillers (Tell No One was adapted into a 2006 French film) but also managed to win all the three major crime-writing awards in the US — the Edgar Allan Poe Award, The Anthony Award and The Shamus — becoming, in the process, the first writer ever to do so.
If you are already acquainted with Bolitar, you may not find his most recent outing as compelling as the likes of Back Spin (where he investigates the murder of a top golfer) or Fade Away (Bolitar unravels the disappearance of a former basketball rival). Yet, the charm of his persona still endures. The plot unfolds with Bolitar getting a mysterious call (in New Jersey, where Coben’s fictional accounts are set usually) from a former lover asking him to catch a flight — immediately — to Paris to meet her. He hasn’t heard from her in 10 years and is now in the middle of a serious relationship but he still hops on to a plane to keep the rendezvous. From there on, he has to match wits with the French secret police (this is not for nothing a contemporary Bond-type thriller), the Mossad, shadowy assasins and terror groups to uncover the reason for not just the killing of his former lady love’s former husband (the reason for her distress call in the first place) but also for the threat to his own life.
Since Coben is a contemporary writer, you will find his themes more in sync with the world order of the 21st century, post 9x11. There are references to Al Qaeda-type operations — even if the weapons the terrorists use to subvert the great American idyll are more “biological” than anyone could have imagined. But, equally, there is also the recognition that not all is faultless with Uncle Sam. Unlike in a Bond book, where on one side of the Iron Curtain are always the good guys, here, there are many shades of grey.
Unlike many other crime thrillers, Coben’s works are as much about his characters as plotlines. Yes, there are red herrings and enough chases and twists in the fast-paced narrative, but what are truly engrossing are the characters too, which are fully etched out. One day, when I have read through all of his 19 books (that he’s written so far) and enough on his life growing up in an American suburb, I may be tempted to do a psychoanalysis of the writer’s father-fixation.
Coben’s father figures in all his stories are pretty similar: They are strong, dependable and silent, family-centric, and have a close relationship with their sons. Even in Long Lost, Bolitar’s father is a much stronger person than his grown-up son expects. He is the protective rock; the son, however battered and bruised, physically and emotionally, can always return to him. The one exception to this “type” is the father of Bolitar’s closest friend and business partner, Win. Win’s father never makes an appearance in any of the books, and is mentioned in just one, Back Spin. But his personality is evident in his son’s — a complete antithesis.
While Win is almost super-human in his assumed invulnerability, a Spock-like character, if you like, and thus a perfect foil to Bolitar, it is only because, as we learn, of a traumatic childhood spent witnessing a sexually liberated mother and a weak father who couldn’t control her escapades. It is tempting to see such a simplistic worldview as a reflection of Coben’s own suburban upbringing and perhaps his nostalgia for a real or imagined “utopia”. On the other hand, the episodes of crime that Bolitar investigates also show up the falseness of this idyll. Crime exists as much in the middle class suburbs as in the big metros and it is these cases that Bolitar usually investigates, even though in his recent book the setting has moved to Paris and London.
But we can’t end without talking some more of Win — Winford Locke-Horne III, pedigreed, assured, a facilitator of the impossible, from fake passports and i-ds, to private jets and sophisticated guns, envied by all for his family money and clout and good looks. Win is a Batman-like character, who goes off into the night killing those he thinks deserve to be eliminated. But he is charismatic and witty. “Articulate,” he says as soon as he picks up the phone to take a call even from friends. There is much less of this kind of humour in the new book.
Nevertheless, a page-turner.
LONG LOST
Author: Harlan Coben
Publisher: Hachette
Pages: 374
Price: Rs 595
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