This is an Essay I wrote in school last term:
Three of Harlan Coben’s outstanding Novels – with focus on their themes and issues
Harlan Coben is a number one bestseller; he has written twenty novels since 1990. This essay concerns three of his standalone novels: Play Dead written in 1990, Hold Tight written in 2008 and Caught written in 2010 – his most recent published work. (wikipedia.org, 1/12 2010) The Daily Mail writes “One of the most consistently brilliant thriller writers, Coben delivers again”. His books are exhilarating thrillers, which are impossible to put away due to the intriguing plots. They awake thoughts and emotions concerning people of all ages, ethnicities and genders. After reading said novels it is interesting to analyse and compare the themes and issues. A short mentioning of the plot and narrative will, of course, be made.
Play Dead was Coben’s first novel, though it was published 2010, and in the introduction he himself wrote “…please know that I haven’t read Play Dead in at least twenty years. I didn’t want to rewrite it and pass it off as a new book. I hate when authors do that. So this is, for better or for worse, the exact book I wrote when I was in my early twenties…” It is therefore a lot easier to compare the differences between this book to the others, the things he held on to and the things he does no longer have in his books. After a man is murdered in his study in the year of 1960 the story leaps forward in time to the year 1989 when the professional basketball player David Baskin and his wife, the ex-supermodel Laura Ayars are on their honeymoon in Australia. One day David goes for a swim but never returns. Laura panics and contacts David’s best friend T.C. He is later asked to identify a body that has been found; T.C. identifies the corpse to be David. Laura is devastated. She informs her father Dr. James Ayars and her sister Gloria about the death of her husband. Then she returns to her home in Boston. James forwards the information to his wife Mary, Laura’s mother. When Laura returns to Boston the characters of Serita and Stan are introduced. Later on in the story the mysterious character of Mark Seidman makes an entry in the story as well. Around that time Laura starts to look into the death of her husband as she has ha lot of trouble letting him go. Laura’s aunt Judy Simmons knows what has happened but she is murdered before she can turn the last bit of the puzzle over to Laura.
A woman is murdered, a boy goes missing and Mike recalls the time he asked his son to Hold Tight. The story begins as Mike and Tia begin to worry about their sixteen-year-old, Adam. He has been acting strangely and it is not only due to the fact that his best friend Spencer Hill committed suicide. They put a spyware on their son’s computer and when they find out about a party with alcohol and drugs they make sure he will not go. It only results in Adam running away. Meanwhile their daughter Jill spends almost all her time with her friend Yasmin, a very sad and angry eleven-year-old. Their teacher, Joe Lewiston snapped and said that Yasmin had facial hair causing all the kids in their class to call her XY (after one of the pairs of chromosomes in the male gender). Another woman goes missing. During their search for the missing woman the police find that the murdered Jane Doe is Yasmin’s mother.
Wendy Tynes, the main character in Caught, works with a TV-crew catching sexual predators. She gets a tip that a man named Dan Mercer is a paedophile. When caught in an underage girl’s house Mercer runs away and no one can reach him for three months, except for his lawyer and his ex-wife Jenna Wheeler who believed in his innocence. At the same time as Dan Mercer goes into hiding a seventeen-year-old named Haley McWaid never returns home after a night out with her friends. Wendy Tynes meets up with Dan as he contacts her three months later. However, their meeting is interrupted by Ed Grayson stepping into the trailer, firing a gun - hitting Dan Mercer in the head. Wendy gets out of there and contacts the police. Returning to the scene there is no corpse to be found. Wendy decides to figure out what is going on and she talks to Dan’s family and friends. In her search for the truth she meets Phil Turnball, Dan’s college roommate, and she begins to think that she might have been mistaken about Dan Mercer. Then Haley McWaid’s cell phone turns up in Dan’s abandoned hotel room.Without any further analysis other than just looking at the plots of the three novels one can see that Coben enjoys writing very complex stories with many characters that are connected in different ways. Hold Tight is the most convoluted story of the three as it is two stories that take place simultaneously, that barely are connected at all. Additionally, there are several side-tracks. Both in Play Dead and in Caught the stories included may be labyrinthine but they are connected in more ways than just relationships between the involved characters.
All three novels are written in the third person. Only Caught has got a different narrative in the prologue and epilogue, and it is then written in the first person. Writing in the first person often gives the reader a feeling that they are reading a diary entry, whereas something written in the third person induces a feeling of being an observer. Coben did write about mysterious characters that were not mentioned by name for a long time in Play Dead, but that effect to create suspense is not a part of the other two novels. It might be that he did not enjoy writing as mysterious as he did, and decided to put his energy into producing brilliantly and breath-taking novels, with a lot of substance.
Laura in Play Dead has a lot of trouble letting David go. Therefore is the theme of eternal love – love beyond “until death tear you apart” – rather profound. On the day of her dead husband’s memorial service she is thinking “He can’t be dead. He just can’t be. Please tell me that this is just a stupid joke and when I get a hold of him I’m going to beat the shit out of him for scaring me like this. Please tell him enough is enough, that I know he is okay, that I know his body was not shredded on coral and rocks.” (pg. 67) The fact that David was taken so suddenly and without warning makes it much harder for Laura to move on with her life, trying so hard to hold on to what would have been.
Love is truly the major theme in Play Dead. It makes people do some insane things, but James Ayars and David Baskin would probably take the noble prize in “a fool in love”. During their honeymoon, David is told that he just married his half-sister. He is asked to leave her and keep their father’s secret. David loves Laura too much to hurt her by leaving her without an excuse so he stages his own death. He believes that she will have an easier time moving on with her life if he dies rather than vanishes. Maybe he could have told her about what was going on and they could have figured something out together. It is easy to be wise after all the facts are in as it turned out that they were not siblings at all. Hence, it poses no difficulty to say that they still could have loved each other. It is difficult for the reader to imagine what David was going through after his conversation with Mary, and one could probably never truly put themselves in his shoes.
James Ayars even did more insane things than David because of his love to Mary. His love got two men murdered, made him abort his wife’s illegitimate child without her knowledge and murder his sister-in-law. It was more than his love to his wife – it was his love to his family. “The whole foundation that supported his [James’s] family would crumble into worthless ruins. Families, like lives, are fragile things. They are held together with flimsy tissue. Stretch that tissue too far…” (pg. 510) It is his belief that he is the one that can protect the family. That belief has twisted his brain, causing it to tell him that he needed to do what he did. The first murder, when James shot Sinclair Baskin, the reader sympathises with James; Sinclair had an affair with James’s wife and got her pregnant, destroying James family. Nevertheless, when James aborts an innocent child the reader cannot understand him any longer, he probably do not understand himself. “... I killed Sinclair Baskin. I put a gun against his forehead and I pulled the trigger, but it was an act spawned from a thoughtless fury against a man who deserved to die” (pg. 366) At first he justifies his first murder victim to have deserved it. Later on he thinks “What about the cruel butchery of my second nameless victim? Can I dismiss that as easily as the death of Sinclair Baskin? No. Guilt will burn eternally inside me for slaying that unstained soul... History would say that the decision was a clever one and in the end, I have to agree.” (pg. 366) James believes that the end justifies the means, but sometimes that saying does not pull through. He murdered and not just once. Nothing can justify what he did.
An issue that never dies and that is brought up in Play Dead is what effect the past has on the present. Mary’s, Judy’s and James’s actions in the year of 1960 damage the relationship between 1989. If Mary had not cheated on her husband she would not have thought that she gave birth to Sinclair Baskin’s daughter and she would not have told David that he married his sister, as she would not have thought so. If Judy had not told James about Mary’s and Sinclair’s affair, Sinclair might still be alive and Stan Baskin would have had a normal childhood, and he would not become a gambler with a twisted view on women. If James had not aborted the unborn child then Laura would not even exist and David might actually have fallen in love with his own sister. One gets the feeling that Harlan Coben wishes to tell the world that if you do something bad it will always come back and hit you in unimaginable ways.
The apparent theme in Hold Tight is family, more specifically concerning what one would do for the ones they love. This shines through in so many ways throughout the book, since there are so many families that are a part of the novel. Two examples are the Baye family, where everyone in some way does something for the ones they love and the Loriman family where Susan Loriman does everything possible to find a donor to her son, without revealing the truth about the identity of his father. The best instances, however, are Nash and the Novak family. Marianne, Guy Novak’s ex-wife, blackmails another human being because he hurt her child. “There had been injury. There had been injustice. There had been blind rage. There had been the burning, primitive desire for revenge. And none of this biblical (or heck – evolutionary) “eye for an eye” stuff – what had they used to call what she´d done? Massive retaliation.” (pg. 7) This sentence awakes thoughts in the reader; what could cause such anger? Someone hurting the ones you love. Marianne punishes Joe Lewiston for what he did to the only living person she loves. In return Nash murders her.
Nash is the murderer in Hold Tight, and the reader knows this from the start. It is his love to his late wife that makes him do what he does. She changed him when they met, and she when she died he got back to normal, to crazy. “Cassandra died and that was when he knew for certain that it was all a crock and a joke and once she was gone, Nash didn’t have the strength to worry about stopping the crazy anymore” (pg. 239) One changes if they love another human being. They want to be their very best, so that they will not lose the one they love. Cassandra asks Nash to take care of her family after she is gone and he promises to do so. Joe was her brother and when he gets scared of the blackmailing he contacts his former brother-on-law.
An issue that is brought up in Hold Tight is privacy, and how much parents should know about their children. Does knowing more about your child does more harm than good? Tia and Mike start spying on their sixteen-year-old son, causing him to run away. However, if Betsy Hill had spied on her son, she would have known what was going on in his life, and maybe she could have prevented Spencer’s suicide. How much should we really know about our family? It is a difficult question to answer as it depends on what one wants to know and what one needs to know.
Children act the way they see their parents act, and Coben brings up this issue in Hold Tight when Jill and Yasmin, two eleven-year-old girls, start spying on their parents and Jill’s brother, just like their parents spy on others. “Kids don’t do what their parents say –they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?” (pgs. 427-428) This implies that parents are, at least partially, blamed for the wrongs of their children. Or at least that they should be. Parents are role models and they should act accordingly. If they do not do so, they will be accused of being bad parents by the society. The fact that children impersonate their parents is visible throughout the society today, and in these cases it is much worse than in the book. Boys that were beaten as they were growing up, or saw their mothers get beaten by their fathers, are much more likely to hit their wife and children when they grow up. Coben wants to share this with the world, and make all his readers consider this, hoping to change at least one parent’s behaviour.
One theme in Caught that is very clear is Death. Coben makes the reader consider what happens after they have left the living life. Is one dead just because they died? Can someone get hurt by something one does after they are dead? Jenna Wheeler expresses an opinion that is somewhat different as it is against all major religions. “Dan is dead. One thing we had in common, neither of us believed in an afterlife. Dead is dead. He wouldn’t care about being rehabilitated now.” (pg. 293) This quote alone makes one wonder what awaits after death, and if there is a life after this at all.
Another theme in Caught is secrets. What does one really know about another being? “He kept something from me. I knew that. We all do that, don’t we? No one knows us entirely. In the end, it’s kind of a cliché, but maybe you never really know a person.” (pg. 290) Does one truly know everything about their best friend, their true love or their family? Everyone hides something. It might be nothing, yet in some cases it is huge, terrible secrets. As the secret that caused Dan Mercer to disappear. One might share all their secrets, but not to the same person. If another human being knows your every thought you would feel vulnerable, as they could crush you in a second.
An issue in Caught is alcohol addiction and teenagers drinking. This is a major problem in the society today. People under eighteen, or sixteen in certain countries, are not allowed to drink. Though, somehow, they get hold of alcohol anyway, and they drink enough to hurt themselves. Some parents, in lack of better judgement, let their children drink in their own house, claiming that it creates a safe environment, and decreases the dangers that come with drinking. Still, if the parents are supportive, and arrange “drinking parties” for children – that is people under the age of eighteen – they will not minimise the number of drinking teenagers, they will only make it bigger. Some teenagers are rebellious, and drink less if their parents show approval, but they are certainly not a majority. “’Four thousand kids per year die of alcohol overdose,’” (pg.270) Four thousand is a terrible number, no matter if it is worldwide or only in the USA, and that is probably why Harlan Coben let one of his characters, a teenage girl, die from an alcohol overdose.
A second issue that is brought up is whether to forgive or seek revenge. Christa got badly hurt when Dan Mercer, Phil Turnball and their friends broke in to the house she was living in during their years at college, and her vision and her face were permanently damaged. Yet she is forgiving. “And there it was. There is so much wisdom in the simple – a truth you can hear in the tone, unmistakeable for anything else. ‘You live in this world, you collide with others. That’s the way it is. We collide and sometimes someone gets hurt. They just wanted to steal a silly pair of boxers. It went wrong. For a short time I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do? It takes so much to hold on to hate – you lose your grip on what’s important, you know?” (pg. 325) Christa decided that it wasn’t worth it, and she gained so much more from life. She might be half blind but she could enjoy the happy memories so much more as she lets go of the hate.
This could be compared to Phil’s view of the situation. He said that he was the reason for the pain that Christa had to go through, that he threw something at the mirror so that it broke, since he was the rich one of his friends and he could afford being kicked out of Princeton. That was a great gesture from Phil, but he hated them, especially Dan, and he couldn’t let go of the hate. “’Whatever else was left of me – whatever good was there – it’s gone now too. That’s what revenge does to you. It eats away at your soul. I should have never opened that door.’” (pgs. 357-358) Phil took out his revenge on his former friends, blaming them for messing up his life when it was him that stole 2 million dollars. The hate and desire for revenge possessed him. It poisoned him, and eventually caused him to commit suicide. Hate damages the soul, and revenge destroys it. There is almost no way to get it back, except for searching forgiveness, and then death is an easy way out.
Harlan Coben uses different themes and issues as the palpable ones in his three novels but they all create thoughts within the reader. He makes one consider both sides of a story, stepping in to the shoes of the characters and tries to understand their views. Death and love are always present as at least one murder is committed in each novel and there is always at least one person that loves the murder victim enough to be affected by their death. The issues and themes are often timeless, for example revenge has been an issue or theme in literary works for centuries. One exception is underage drinking. That is an issue that is growing with today’s society. The issues are serious and the reader might even change opinion about a subject after reading one of these novels. In Hold Tight Coben presents a few more issues, but only vaguely. The issues in Caught and Play Dead are therefore a bit clearer as the entire book is dedicated to the issues in question whereas Hold Tight moves away from the subject at times.
Harlan Coben writes crime novels and they tend to be very similar in style. He creates the differences between them by including different themes and issues. Coben is an author. An author has the power to share his views with the world in his works. More importantly; the world listens. When reading a book one is very focused on the plot and if the writer puts forward certain issues in the plot it will cause the reader to think about them, and consider their own opinion. Harlan Coben, as a number one bestseller is in a true power position to make people think, and use their heads for a change. He uses that position by informing the audience about truly important matters. “His trademark is twists that you don’t see coming and his writing is not just exciting but also thought-provoking.” (Daily Mail) True.
Sources:
Coben, H., Play Dead, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Hold Tight, 2008, Orion, Great Britain
Coben, H., Caught, 2010, Orion, Great Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Coben
sorry, this was such a long post ;)
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