基本信息出版社：Orion mass market paperback
页码：352 页
出版日期：2003年07月
ISBN：0752849190
条形码：9780752849195
版本：New Ed
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
丛书名：A Myron Bolitar novel

内容简介 Life isn't going well for Myron Bolitar. His business is struggling, and his father, recently recovered from a heart attack, is facing his own mortality - and forcing Myron to face it too. Then comes another surprise. Emily Downing, Myron's college sweetheart, reappears in his life with devastating news: her thirteen-year-old son Jeremy is gravely ill and can be saved only by a bone-marrow transplant - from a donor who has vanished without trace. Before Myron can absorb this revelation, Emily hits him with an even bigger shocker: Jeremy is Myron's son, conceived the night before Emily's wedding to another man. Staggered by the news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor. But for Myron, finding the only person who can save the boy's life means cracking open a mystery as dark as it is heartbreaking - a mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and a cat-and-mouse game between an ambitious reporter and the FBI.
作者简介 Harlan Coben was the first ever author to win all three major crime awards in the US. He is now global bestseller with his mix of powerful stand-alone thrillers and Myron Bolitar crime novels. He has appeared in the bestseller lists of THE TIMES, the NEW YORK TIMES, LE MONDE, WALL STREET JOURNAL and the LOS ANGELES TIMES. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.
媒体推荐 Review in SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE August 2003 Review in BRADFORD TELEGRAPH & ARGUS
编辑推荐 Amazon.co.uk Review
Darkest Fear represents an interesting transition between Coben's comparatively lightweight and formulaic early novels and his more recent, nervier and darker novels such as Tell No One and Gone for Good. It is part of the series dealing with the misadventures of Myron Bolitar, sports agent and occasional investigator, but this time Myron has more than the convenience of his clients on his mind. An old girlfriend turns up with the revelation that her son is dying for a bone-marrow transplant--and that the son is his. Myron has always had an overdeveloped sense of personal responsibility and this time it goes into overdrive. He, and his efficiently violent friend Win, find themselves involved with one of the richest and most secretive families in America, with a particularly brutal serial kidnapper and murderer and with the FBI on one of its off days.

Coben takes his wise-cracking series hero and puts him in real physical and emotional jeopardy--the book is impressive, and a decisive break with the formula he had established earlier. After this, gloomier and more dangerous books were inevitable, and protagonists less fundamentally cheerful than the ebullient Myron. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Review in SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE August 2003 Review in BRADFORD TELEGRAPH & ARGUS

When the perfect opening line blends seamlessly into the perfect opening chapter and the pace shows no sign of slacking, you know you're on to a winner. Harlan Coben - the first author to win the three major US crime writing awards - looks set to follow up the bestselling success of previous works with this, the latest in a series of thrillers centred on Myron Bolitar. Erstwhile sports celebrity and hard-edged cynic would be just two of many labels that could be hung on the often sloped shoulders of our hero Myron, who has only just managed to move out of his parents' home at the age of 34. When a face from the past floats back into focus, Myron gets sucked into 'too much history' as he ruminates on that good-natured antagonism - brilliantly described as the 'pulling sadness' - of encounters with old flames. The first love of his life has returned to ask for help, and he's just about to ask her what her pretty unusual problem has to do with him when she delivers a devastating revelation. Over 'complicated coffees', she informs him that, after all this time, he has a teenage son. A teenage son who will die if he doesn't receive a bone marrow transplant, and if that wasn't enough, the potential donor has just disappeared into the ether. Wonderfully realized images of American suburbia combine with changing times and the fears of growing up and growing old are interspersed with passages connecting today's penchant for the Internet with that most Seventies of fads, the CB Radio. The twists and turns come at precisely the right moments, and the sharp dialogue, sharp narrative and convincingly real characters combine to ensure this thriller really will have you finish it in one sitting. (Kirkus UK)


专业书评
From Kirkus Reviews
Years after a mauled knee ended his basketball career in his first preseason game, sports agent Myron Bolitar is still taking body blows. The latest is the news that he has a son by Emily Downing, the college sweetheart whose wedding to rival hoopster Greg Downing he celebrated perhaps too vigorously with her the night before. Emily’s kept her secret for 13 years, but now that Jeremy’s been diagnosed with life-threatening Fanconi anemia, she begs his help in locating a bone-marrow donor who’d be a perfect match for their son if only he hadn’t vanished. And it gets worse. Myron’s search for the missing donor swiftly drags him into the nightmare world of a serial kidnapper whose whispered phone mantra to his victims’ loved ones—“Sow the seeds”—has been spreading terror for years; to the reporter whose exclusive stories on the kidnapper sent his career soaring before wrecking it and killing his girlfriend; and to the obscenely wealthy Lex family, whose members aren’t shy about using their money to destroy anyone who crosses their path—anyone like Myron, for instance. As the complications deepen, the oppressively playful badinage of the opening chapters falls away, revealing Coben (The Final Detail, 1999, etc.) once again as one of the most inventive plotters in the business—until he tries one spin too many with an epilogue that’s too twisty, too sentimental, and way too long. Even so, Myron runs rings around most of the tough-guy competition in the amateur division, like a class clown who’s much more than just a funny face. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"A slam dunk ... You race to turn the pages ... both suspenseful and often surprisingly funny."
-- People

"Terrific."
-- The Boston Globe

"A winner."
-- The Orlando Sentinel

"Fast-paced ... layered with both tenderness and fun ... Coben [is] a gifted storyteller."
-- The Denver Post
--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.