Just One Look

A New York Times Bestselling Author A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, Literary Guild, and Mystery Guild When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong. At least twenty years old, the photo shows four strangers with her husband, Jack. Although he denies it, Jack disappears that night, taking the photograph with him. In the days that follow, Grace struggles with doubts and unanswered questions, and realizes that others are looking for Jack - including one fierce, silent killer. From Publishers Weekly Coben's latest thriller (after No Second Chance ) is a riveting, albeit perplexing, nightmare that finds hapless New Jersey wife and mother Grace Lawson dealing with an assortment of fearful developments, including a missing spouse, a terrifyingly adaptable hit man, deceitful friends, hidden agendas and ghosts from the past. Reader MacDuffie wisely takes her cues from Coben's prose. When he describes a policeman as "patronizing," she lends just the right vocal inflection to his lines, then quickly switches to the sarcastic tones of feisty Grace. And for the novel's most ingratiating character, Charlene Swain, MacDuffie's voice subtly shifts from vague to vital as the Percodan-popping, bored-to-tears housewife rises above her ennui to give Grace a helping hand in combating the wicked hit man Wu. Coben fills his thriller with unoriginal characters (including a murderer on death row, a rock-and-roller in comeback mode and a gentrified mobster with revenge on his mind), but MacDuffie's skillful interpretation brings the characters and action into sharp focus. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist If the trick of suspense writing is to get readers to identify so passionately with the beleaguered principal character that they disappear into the story, feeling the knife points of tension themselves, then Coben is the Houdini of the form. Coben, who has won the Trifecta of mystery writing--the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus Awards--likes to burst the bubble of suburban security by having his characters' well-ordered, happy lives upended in ways that mirror readers' fears. In his four stand-alone thrillers, the past comes back to bite or haunt the protagonist, or the present vanishes in one fatal moment. In this latest excursion into the dark, a suburban mother finds one picture that does not belong in the pack of family outing photos she's just picked up. The picture, showing a group of college students, seems as if it was taken 20 years ago. One of the group looks like her husband. A girl in the group has an X drawn across her face. When Mrs. Happily Married shows the picture to her husband, he seems shaken, then leaves home. Coben ratchets up the suspense of the wife trying to find her husband with another drama, that of a serial killer in the neighborhood. A tragic accident from the woman's past intersects with her husband's secrets and the movements of the killer in ways that are satisfyingly creepy. Connie Fletcher Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved An ordinary snapshot causes a mother?s world to unravel in an instant. After picking up her two young children from school, Grace Lawson looks through a newly developed set of photographs. She finds an odd one in the pack: a mysterious picture from perhaps twenty years ago, showing four strangers she can?t identify. But there is one face she recognizes?that of her husband, from before she knew him. When her husband sees the photo that night, he leaves their home and drives off without explanation. She doesn?t know where he?s going, or why he?s leaving. Or if he?s ever coming back. Nor does she realize how dangerous the search for him will be. Because there are others interested in both her husband?s past and that photo, including Eric Wu: a fierce, silent killer who will not be stopped from finding his quarry, no matter who or what stands in his way. Her world turned upside down, filled with doubts about her herself and marriage, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past she struggles to learn the truth, find her husband, and save her family An ordinary snapshot causes a mother’s world to unravel in this shocking thriller from the bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger . When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong-a photo from at least twenty years ago with a man in it who looks strikingly like her husband, Jack. And though Jack denies it's him, he disappears that night, taking the photo with him. Now, to save her family from a fierce, silent killer who will stop at nothing to get the photo, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past.... A seemingly innocuous twenty-year-old photograph turns Grace Lawson's peaceful life upside down when her husband, Jack, mysteriously vanishes with the photograph and unanswered questions threaten her marriage and everything she knows