'I WILL FIND YOU'.....ONCE AGAIN, COBEN FRAYS YOUR NERVES....AND RAISES THE DEAD.....

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I Will Find You by Harlan Coben (2023)     For anyone who's picked up one of Harlan Coben's page-turning thrill rides.........do I even need to sell you on this?

                 This is one author who guarantees you an up-all-night, I-gotta-see-what-happens-next reading experience.......and I can't remember when he ever disappointed. 

                  From perusing the description, you might be tempted to own this book immediately and tuck it away as a prime beach read. But I defy you to contain yourselves once you've read that inside cover flap.

                 Once again Coben returns to his all-time favorite plot device......in which the emotionally damaged lead character discovers a missing/presumed dead loved one is, in truth, very much alive. And from that point on, the hunt commences, fraught with danger, vicious villains and twists galore. 

                 "I Will Find You" dials up this trope to the max and on top of that throws in Hitchcock's favorite obsession - the innocent man, wrongly accused, forced to survive police capture and attempts on his life from the real evil conspirators. . 

                   This time, our rider on the Coben rollercoaster is David Burroughs, serving out a life sentence for the horrific clubbing murder of his own 3 year old son.  But his soul-crushed existence changes when his sister-in-law visits with a newspaper photo of a festive day at a theme park......  which includes a boy in the background with an uncanny resemblance to David's supposedly murdered little boy.....and sporting an identical birthmark. 

                    By this time, you just know that somehow, against all odds, David will break out of prison in a last ditch attempt to get to the bottom of things.....finding his son, finding the perpetrators and, finding out the identity of the poor murdered child buried in his son's place. You also just know that his quest will become as harrowing and nail-biting as Harlan Coben can devise. 

                     And as usual in Coben mysteries, brace yourself for devouring the pages at light speed until the final chapter. Prepare yourself for a whole lot of breath holding as David (a la Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive", conducts his desperate search barely escaping the clutches of cops and a relentless,  perpetually wisecracking oddball pair of FBI agents.

                    As a thriller junkie, I can't think of a better way to kick off the Spring-Summer reading season then to dive into one of Harlan Coben's double-beef-whoppers of a read.  Even if you get ahold of it before you hit the beach, it's still more fun to consume faster than a whole bucket of Boardwalk fries.  Easily 5 stars (*****) a BQ FIND OF FINDS.