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Topic: Best Harlan Coben to start a new reader with...?

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Subject: Best Harlan Coben to start a new reader with...?
Date Posted: 10/22/2021 9:11 PM ET
Member Since: 4/11/2007
Posts: 875
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Our eldest grand-daughter, (who is 20), has expressed an interest in reading Harlan Coben, whom I have been a fan of since discovering "Deal Breaker" in 1996. I have waffled over whether to just start her at the beginning, with the first Simon Bolitar novel and just go through the bibliography in publication order. The other choice, obviously, is to recommend she read one of the stand-alone novels. My quandary is, which one (or two) to choose?

So, my question is this: Which of the non-Bolitar novels is your favorite?



Last Edited on: 10/22/21 9:14 PM ET - Total times edited: 3
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Date Posted: 11/30/2021 8:23 PM ET
Member Since: 2/22/2011
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I also love his books. The most recent one I read was Run Away.  I really liked that one. 

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Date Posted: 11/30/2021 10:19 PM ET
Member Since: 4/11/2007
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Yeah, "Run Away" was pretty good. I ultimately settled on "Deal Breaker" (the first Bolitar novel) and "Tell No One" to sen.d to my grand-daughter.

I am pretty much caught up with everything that has been released to date. I enjoyed "Win", which sort of was sort of a standalone novel but coupled with giving some of Win's backstory. If you are a Myron Bolitar fan, I recommend "Win". Also, I just finished both "The Woods" and "The Boy From The Woods". Both were excellent, but since the latter book is supposed to be the start of a new character series, it suffers a bit; I found "The Woods" was better.

So, that said, thanks for responding! As my thanks to you, here's a gift: If you're interested in getting into another really good author, let me suggest/recommend T. Jefferson Parker. He is arguably the best author won has won multiple Edgars, (Coben only has one, Parker has three), that not many readers know about. Like Coben, he has a few different character series (Charlie Hood, Merci Rayburn, Roland Ford) as well as lot of really good standalones.

Cheers and Happy Reading!