Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

Hey I noticed Hold Tight by Harlan Coben. I noticed it because I’m reading it at the moment. I’ve read about 100 pages or so and I’ll give you a brief outline of the plot set up to whet your appetite. Be warned though, if you start reading a Harlan Coben book you find yourself pretty well sucked right into the story. Or maybe I’m just projecting my experience onto you.

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben – The 100 page treatment.

Hold tight is a story that is broken down into multiple storylines. It’s the kind of book where nothing appears related, but you know in the back of your mind that they’re going to be tied together somehow down the line – else why would they be in the book?

Storyline 1 : Mike and Tia Baye are concerned about their 16-year-old son Adam who has become increasingly withdrawn and surly of late. He has suddenly quit the school hockey team, a sport that he had always loved, and was spending a lot of time shut in his room sitting on the Internet. It all seems to have started around the time Spencer Hill, a boy Adam went to school with, committed suicide. Afraid that Adam may be heading down the same teenage depression path, Mike and Tia make the unorthodox decision of spying on their son’s Internet activities. But they find that it’s one thing to know what their son is doing but figuring out what to do with the information is a completely different matter.

Storyline 2 : A couple, a man and a woman are out murdering women, so far there’s been 2 of them. But they’re not doing it for kicks or thrills, they’re torturing the women and extracting information of some sort before the man, named Nash, beats them to death with brutal precision. We have no idea what they’re after of who will be next.

Storyline 3 : County Prosecutor’s Chief Investigator Lauren Muse is on the case when the body of the first murdered woman is discovered. Muse is a controversial appointee and is involved in a couple of delicious confrontations to let us get to know her really well, not to mention put us firmly on her side. It looks like she’s going to be a formidable investigator full of razor sharp insights.

Oh yeah, one final titbit for Harlan Coben, and Myron Bolitar fans in particular. Tia Baye is an attorney and works for none other than Hester Crimstein. Fans of the Myron Bolitar series will recognise Crimstein as the overly outspoken and incredibly competent lawyer who represents Bolitar whenever he gets into trouble with the law (at least once per book).