Desperate to shed light on her disappearance, David follows the order to ‘tell no one’ but for how long? Out on his own, suspicions turn on him as powerful sources are prepared to destroy him in order to keep their secrets.ĭavid is a likable lead, typical of Coben’s stand-alones (of which this is his first), he’s an everyman in an extraordinary situation. Then a mysterious e-mail arrives on the anniversary of their first kiss: a message and image that leads David to wonder if Elizabeth could still be alive. He’s finished med-school and become a paediatrician working with ghetto kids in Manhattan. The strengths in this book outweigh the weaknesses.David Beck and his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth are on vacation when he is knocked unconscious in a brutal attack that sees Elizabeth being murdered, supposedly by a serial killer called KillRoy.Įight years later and David Beck has rebuilt his life. Initially, I would question how and why a character or set of characters would be introduced, but would find the answer out later as David uncovered clues mostly on his own. As the book progresses, mobsters and criminals become involved, along with family members from David's and Elizabeth's families.

Various characters and plot lines are created to thicken story. In David's mind, no one else could have possibly known about the tree carving except for his wife, so he is dragged into a series of emails with specific information that lead him on a long journey to solve a mystery very close to his heart. It was made up of their initials and a '/' for each of their years together. The subject line recreated a tree carving that David and his deceased wife had done. Beck receives an email from an unknown sender yet he is drawn in and opens it because of the subject line: Throughout the Tell No One, I felt like I was in David's mind and along for the emotional ride he encountered. We live in a world full of crazies and Coben's detail and realistic depiction of the scene was both good and bad in that I wanted to keep reading despite the sick details put into the killing. The initial story of he and his wife celebrating their anniversary with an annual tradition and having that venture take a horrible, deadly spin was extremely realistic. I did feel sorry for him and his roller coaster of a situation regarding his wife. I found David, the protagonist, to be a likeable character that I could trust throughout the book.

Tell no one coben