Publication Date March 25, 2025
Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben
Over the past several years, I have read and reviewed several Harlan Coben books, and with the exception of Win, all were four or five stars (although it may have been that Covid screwed up my ability to enjoy my usually reliable authors’ releases). Hmmm. In any case, I was happy to receive a copy of Nobody’s Fool from Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
Just as was the case with 2023’s I Will Find You, I made a fairly conscious decision to “go along for the ride” and just enjoy the story, overlooking any need for willing suspension of disbelief or other pesky obstacles to just a fun read. In this one, a young man backpacking through Europe with his girlfriend following his college graduation wakes up in the middle of the night to find himself lying next to his dead girlfriend. As if that isn’t enough, he has a knife in his hand, he’s covered in blood, and he has less than zero clue what happened. So he does what we’d all do (?), he runs.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and the man, now a private investigator, is working a second job as a teacher during the evenings in New York City. When he sees a woman at the back of the classroom who he is SURE is that dead girlfriend from years ago, he gets a huge jot, and as soon as he makes eye contact with her, she does what we’d all do (?), she runs!
Time for him to figure out the whole mystery, both from twenty-plus years ago and from the present day. As with all Coben’s books, there are some interesting plot twists, some well-drawn characters, and a pretty good time! Four stars.