Review: No Second Chance

I'm not the first to compare Coben's protagonists to the main characters in Hitchcock films. Like Cary Grant in "North by Northwest," or Jimmy Stewart in "The Man Who Knew too Much," Marc Seidman has been living a rather uneventful life. His marriage is not setting the world on fire, but he loves his infant daughter with deep, believable passion.

Everything goes downhill in one dramatic moment - he and his wife are both shot in their home, his wife dies from her injuries, and the baby has disappeared. A 2 million dollar ransom demand arrives in fairly short order. Following the accepted wisdom, police and FBI investigators regard Seidman as the most likely perpetrator, and their investigations all concentrate on uncovering his alleged guilt. Eventually not caring what law enforcement thinks, Seidman wants his daughter back. Now. The first attempt to deliver the money and retrieve the little girl fails. Eighteen months elapse. As he tries to return to a "normal" life, Seidman receives another ransom demand. This time he takes matters into his own hands, assisted by a former FBI agent and the most unlikely (and delightful) pair of sidekicks I have ever come across. They appear on page 245. You'll have to read the book yourself to learn more about them.

Hitchcock pointed out that in his films, the object everyone was searching for was truly unimportant. He called it a "McGuffin." A role of microfilm, some grains of a rare metal, or whatever. What held the audience's attention was the chase. In "No Second Chance" Coben ups the stakes. At no time do we ever regard Seidman's daughter as a "McGuffin." It's clear she is a living, breathing, delightful little girl, and we lurch from crisis to crisis, from one dangerous encounter to another, all the time rooting for Seidman to hold his little girl again.

Coben slyly inserts references to his other books, a kind of wink and "nudge, nudge" to readers who follow him faithfully. A Little League ball team drinks YooHoo (with the narrator noting "it tastes like chalk") David Beck, the protagonist in "Tell No One" is a coworker of two of the book's characters, although he has no part of the action. I smiled when these references appeared, but immediately was ready to turn back to the search for the little girl. Others might disagree, but I felt that it was a way for Coben to emphasize the pleasure shared by an author and his readers.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM

Book Review: No Second Chance