FROM OUR EDITORS

Will Klein suffers a double loss. First, his ex-girlfriend Julie Miller is viciously raped and murdered; then Will's older brother Ken becomes the chief suspect and disappears. Eleven years pass. Then a few words spoken from his mother's deathbed force Will to realize that the past has come back to haunt him.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"As a boy, Will Klein had a hero: his older brother, Ken. Then, on a warm suburban night in the Kleins' affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman - a girl Will had once loved - was found raped and murdered in her family's basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished, spending the next decade as the elusive subject of rumors, speculation, and an international manhunt. When his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good." Now eleven years have passed. And Will, who always believed in his brother's innocence, has found evidence that Ken is alive - even as he is struck by another act of betrayal. His girlfriend suddenly disappears, leaving behind compelling evidence that she was not the person Will thought she was. As two dark dramas unwind around him, Will is pulled into a violent mystery, haunted by signs that Ken is trying to contact him after all these years. Will can feel himself coming closer and closer to his brother ... and to a terrible secret that someone will kill to keep buried. And as the lies begin to unravel, Will is uncovering starting truths about his lover, his brother, and even himself. He knows he must press his search all the way to the end. Because the most powerful revelations are yet to come.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

"We never forget our first love. Mine ended up being murdered." Newcomers and fans alike will know they're deep in Coben country with the author's ninth book, in which a counselor of runaways with his own history of broken hearts and death finds himself caught in a web of lost identities, forgotten nemeses and smoldering grudges. Will Klein was a nice Jewish boy from a nice Jersey suburb until his ex-girlfriend was found strangled next door and his brother became an international fugitive. Eleven years later, as his mother succumbs to cancer, Will gets the deathbed confession that his brother, Ken, is alive; around the same time, his girlfriend, Sheila (herself a runaway with a "murky past"), disappears and a neighborhood psycho called the Ghost resurfaces. Will is yanked into an FBI investigation via his friend Squares (a yogi whose forehead tattoo carries multiple meanings), which jumbles up the aforementioned cast of characters with another mystery occurring in the Midwest. True to form, Coben keeps the plot twists coming fast and furious, and readers will give up trying to guess the outcome quite early on; yet the book's entertainment value lies less in its plot than its characters. From the New York streetwalker Raquel ("Many transvestites are beautiful. Raquel was not. He was black, six-six, and comfortably on the north side of three hundred pounds") to Belmont, Neb.'s Sheriff Bertha Farrow ("Murder scenes were bad, but for overall vomit-inducing, bone-crunching, head-splitting, blood-splattering grossness, it was hard to beat the metal-against-flesh effect of an old-fashioned automobile accident"), this title delivers. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Coben has written another winner, guaranteed to keep readers awake all night. On the day of his mother's funeral, Will Klein discovers a photograph proving that his brother, Ken, is alive. Eleven years earlier, a young woman who was dating Ken was found strangled, and Ken's blood was found at the murder scene. Will never heard from Ken after that night, and his family and the police assumed that he was dead. While Will is contemplating this stunning revelation, his girlfriend, Sheila, vanishes under mysterious circumstances. Will's efforts to solve the disappearances of Sheila and Ken open a terrifying Pandora's box. Complex and unpredictable, this is even better than Coben's last novel, Tell No One. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/02.] Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

The disappearance/reappearance theme that played so well in TELL NO ONE drives Coben's new novel. Dylan Baker lays out an intriguing tale of Will Klein's search for his fugitive brother, leading listeners through each false trail and deception. Baker does his best with the thriller, but the abridgment disappoints. Not surprisingly, the emphasis of this adaptation is on the action, abundant with violence, but further character development would have been welcome. Baker's narrative and psychological portraits are strong, but some of the bad guys don't have sufficient menace for their words and deeds. This doesn't have the staying power of Coben's other successes. R.F.W. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews