This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Sigh, not the way I wanted to start the month’s reading. First, I won’t be continuing this series or reading any more by this author. For the usual immoral reasons, sigh. It was so flipping checkmark too. Then you had an almost rape scene. While I acknowledge that bad men do very bad things, bringing it into fiction as “entertainment” isn’t right. Finally, Myron lets a murderer kill herself to cover up what she did because she’s the mother of his big client and it would destroy his client and he (Bolitar) would lose all the money from being his agent. There are times I can see letting someone get away with murder, I really can. But not for a base motive like money. So all those things coming together made this a very unpleasant read.
★☆☆☆☆
From Wikipedia
A young woman is shot in cold blood, her lifeless body dumped outside the stadium at the height of the US Open. At one point, her tennis career had skyrocketed. Now headlines were being made by a different young player from the wrong side of the tracks.
When Myron Bolitar investigates the killing, he uncovers a connection between the two players and a six-year-old murder at an exclusive club. Suddenly, Myron is in over his head. And with a dirty senator, a jealous mother, and the mob all drawn into the case, he finds himself playing the most dangerous game of all.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
This is the first book in a series about Myron Bolitar (hence the series name), a man who was an up and coming basketball star, only to have things come to a complete crashing halt when his leg gets shattered in his first game. So he goes to school, becomes a lawyer and then becomes a sports agent. He also apparently did some super-secret black ops stuff for the government with a man who is now one of his best friends and business partner. But this book isn’t about those events at all. They are just alluded to and form a bigger picture of who Myron Bolitar is.
This is a Harlan Coben novel through and through. It has all the elements from the standalones that I’ve read so far (except for the absence of the Witness Protection Program. I just kept waiting for that to pop up and it never did. I was surprised!) but reworked deftly enough that I was never quite sure what the picture was that I was looking at. It was like seeing things when your eyes are dilated. You can generally tell what you are looking at but even the middling details get a bit muddled.
I was generally happy with this read and as long as Coben can keep his stories original with the character of Myron, I’ll happily feed at the trough even if it’s not 5star material.
That does bring me to Myron himself though. He was one of the reasons this didn’t get to the 3.5star rating. He’s a semi-successful business man in his early 30’s I think, but he still lives in his parents basement and participates in their family life, ie, eating breakfast with them, etc. What a loser. I mean, what a complete and utter loser who deserves to have his face ground into the dirt for being such a loser. His parents don’t need his help, he doesn’t make their life better, he complains in his head about both of them, but he won’t move out even though he has the means to. What a scumbag. I hope in one of the later books some mobster shatters his other leg to teach him a fething lesson about growing up. In that same vein, there was also a page where he complains about his parents naming him Myron. What 30 year old is still worrying about his name? I can see a highschooler doing that, but not a grown man. And that is the crux of the matter right there. Coben has written Myron Bolitar as a mix of little boy and grown man and it grates on me, almost like Coben took a cheese grater to my washboard abs.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia and Bookstooge.blog
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Investigator and sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron’s prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman whom everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail. Trying to unravel the truth about a family’s tragedy, a woman’s secret and a man’s lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business—where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed.
In the end, facing down mob bosses, angry dead dads and corrupt sports stars, Myron figures out one of his sports athletes participated in the events that led to a young woman’s death and another of his athletes committed the crime itself.
