No Second Chance
…when I get seriously lost or afraid in the realm of raising a child, I look at the helpless bundle in the crib and she looks up at me and I wonder what I would not do to protect her. I would lay down my life in a second. And truth be told, if push came to shove, I would lay down yours too.
.. I can only be as happy as my saddest child.
The very day I started reading this book – another Harlan Coben thriller, No Second Chance – a new little life came into our family. Infinitely precious. Unutterably fragile. Totally innocent.
Dr Marc Seidman is a specialist in paediatric reconstructive surgery – he takes care of children, mostly from overseas, who suffer from deformities through birth, poverty or conflict. Then one day he wakes up in ICU himself, and discovers he has been shot twice, lost consciousness, and his heart had stopped. He learns he has been hovering between life and death, battling sepsis, for twelve days. His rich but volatile wife Monica is dead – also shot. His beautiful baby daughter Tara is missing. For twelve days already.
The police find fingerprints in the house belonging to Stacy, his drug-addicted sister, whom he hasn’t seen for six months. And then she too is found dead.
The day Marc is released from hospital his father-in-law reveals he has been sent a snippet from Tara’s babygro, pink with black penguins. And little wisps of baby hair. The ransom note demands two million dollars. Marc himself is to deliver it. But he doesn’t follow directions to the letter and the robotic voice on the phone is implacable: No second chance. Marc will live with the consequences for the rest of his life.
But with no grave, no body, a glimmer of hope flickers on, hiding, taunting, never quite leaving Marc. By now he must also contend with some of the police believing he was the mastermind behind the kidnapping.
Then an old flame – Rachel – turns up, a former agent with the FBI. Why had she suddenly retired? Are the rumours true that she shot her husband dead?
A second ransom note is sent eighteen months after the first, again with hair genetically matched to the first sample. But are they from Tara? Is this a trap? A glimpse of a child silhouetted beside the man in the flannel shirt spurs him on; a second look at the face of the child in the man’s car convinces him it is not his daughter.
But if there is the remotest chance she could still be alive, Marc cannot give up. He co-opts Rachel and her skill as a special agent and together they unravel circles of heartbreak and need, deceit and greed, leading them closer and closer to answers to the big questions that have been haunting Marc. Who shot him? Why didn’t he hear the glass breaking? Why was Monica naked? What is the connection between his wife and the girl who lived in his house before he bought it? Is Tara still alive? One by one the pieces of the jigsaw slot into place but … there’s still one vital piece missing.
In his acknowledgements Coben lists seven technical experts who helped him in the creation of this book, adding, ‘Any mistakes are theirs and theirs alone. After all, they’re the experts, right? Why should I take take the heat?’ Goes with his whole confident style, I’d say! Wish I had his courage and assurance.
Faith and doubt Richard Osman’s meteoric rise