Fool Me Once

“Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.”

Fool Me Once was the first Harlan Coben book I laid my hands on and I am glad about that. The book began with a former special ops pilot Maya standing at the funeral of her husband who was shot dead recently, right in front of her. The investigations are on just as a couple of other seemingly related deaths and revelations show up. The pace of the plot gets rolling when Maya comes home one day to find a video of her daughter playing with her dead husband on her nanny cam. There is absolutely nothing I can further say without spoiling it, so I shall stop discussing the plot now.

One of the things I look out for in books are the complexity and depth of characters. To say that this book was realistic about Maya’s personality would be an understatement. I loved her no-nonsense interrogations during her one-woman missions, cementing her character well into the military background and sometimes even giving me a window into her thought process.

However, there were two minor problems I had while reading this book:

• Certain really clever dialogues (mostly retorts!) were refurbished again and again in subsequent conversations, making them lose their brilliance.
• Just why was that 25-years-later epilogue written is beyond me! It would have been much better if the book just ended right before that.

Despite the above mentioned points, Fool Me Once was a great read and one thing I am sure of is that I definitely want to read further books from this author again. His clever storytelling is sure to keep you turning pages right until the end, so if you are looking for a good thriller to read, this might be it!