Harlan Coben - Darkest Fear

Myron Bolitar is a sports agent and part time investigator. He said that he had given up investigating until an ex-girlfriend from many years ago turns up unexpectedly with the news that her son needs a bone marrow transplant and the donor has gone missing. She wants Myron to track down the donor. Then she drops the added bombshell that Myron may be the boy’s father. The search for the donor reveals mysteries involving kidnapping, dark secrets and an F.B.I. investigation.

After reading Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay many reviewers recommended Harlan Coben as a similar style writer. A quick scan of my to read pile revealed Darkest Fear so I decided to give it a go.

I enjoyed this book but I had one major problem with it: I really didn’t like the main character, Myron. I found him really irritating. He did grow on me a bit eventually, but I didn’t grow to actually like him. I liked his business partners / sidekicks Esperanza and Win and would have liked a little more of them in the book.

Darkest Fear is one of a series of books about Myron, maybe if I’d started at the beginning I’d have liked him more (or maybe not!). The fact that I haven’t read any of the previous books didn’t matter to the storyline at all. I get the feeling that I was missing a little background information but nothing of importance to the story in hand. The book worked well as a story in its own right.

I think it says a lot that although I found the main character incredibly annoying I still really enjoyed the book. I liked the writing style and the storyline and I didn’t manage to guess the outcome. It was somewhat farfetched but I don’t mind that, it is fiction after all.

I will definitely be on the lookout for more Harlan Coben in future, I may even read another of the Myron Bolitar books at some point.