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Title:
Deal Breaker
Series: Myron Bolitar #1
Author:
Harlan Coben
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Fiction
Pages: 291
Words: 88K
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
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.
