Book Review: Darkest Fear

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Darkest Fear     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Harlan Coben
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Sports   Private Investigator
Series: Myron Bolitar # 7
Delacorte, Jun 2000, $23.95, 310 pp.

When sports representative Myron Bolitar visits his parents, he struggles with them selling the family home, and his father’s illness. To his surprise, an unwanted ghost from his past arrives at his doorstep. The woman ended her relationship with Myron in college to marry his rival, but not before one last fling the night before her wedding. Before he can toss out on her butt, she pleads with him to find the missing person whose bone marrow matches that of her dying son. Without the transplant, Jeremy will die.

Although Myron sympathizes with her plight, he refuses to help her in anyway until she admits that he fathered Jeremy. After that bombshell, he immediately begins to search for the missing donor by obtaining the name from a totally secure database. That name leads Myron to a discredited reporter, who once plagiarized a series of articles on a serial killer. After that meeting, the FBI questions Myron as they strongly feel the journalist knows much more than he is saying. Triangulated by a psychotic murderer, a distraught mother, and a fanatical Fed, Myron continues his quest to save his son’s life.

After every Bolitar novel, everyone agrees that secondary character Win Lockwood, a psychotic anti-hero with a strange sense of humor and loyalty, is as fascinating a player that has ever graced a mystery. He retains that eerie glow in DARKEST FEAR, a brilliant story that includes several major subplots that tie back to, while expanding, the main story line. Harlan Coben has written many superb Bolitar tales, but none as excellent as this one is.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner