Play Dead - Softcover

Coben, Harlan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 045123913X ISBN 13: 9780451239136

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2012

Synopsis

The worlds of celebrity and sports are brilliantly dissected and turned upside down in #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben's debut thriller.

Theirs was a marriage made in tabloid heaven, but no sooner had supermodel Laura Ayars and Celtics star David Baskin said "I do" than tragedy struck. While honeymooning on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, David went out for a swim--and never returned.

Now widowed and grieving, Laura has a thousand questions and no answers. Her search for the truth will draw her into a web of lies and deception that stretches back thirty years--while on the court at Boston Garden, a rookie phenom makes his spectacular debut...

About this title

Review

Praise for Play Dead

"Coben...keeps the reader off balance with innovative story lines and diabolical bad guys."--People

"Truly surprising."--Entertaiment Weekly

"Kept me riveted in suspense and eager anticipation."--New York Daily News

More Praise for Harlan Coben

"Coben is one of the best authors around at writing page-turning suspense...He has a knack for hooking readers right away and holding their interest as they zoom through his plots."--Chicago Sun-Times

"Nobody writes them better than Coben."--Associated Press

"What Coben does best is take readers into his characters' hearts and minds."--USA Today

"Every time you think Harlan Coben couldn't get any better at uncoiling a whipsnake of a page-turner, he comes along with a new novel that somehow surpasses its predecessor."--The San Francisco Chronicle

"Coben is the undisputed modern master of the suburban thriller."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Author

Okay, if this is the first book of mine you're going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It's okay. I'll wait.
If you're still here, please know that I haven't read Play Dead in at least twenty years. I didn't want to rewrite it and pass it off as a new book. I hate when authors do that. So this is, for better or worse, the exact book I wrote and published when I was in my twenties, just a naïve lad working in the travel industry and wondering if I should follow my father and brother and go to (shudder) law school.
I'm hard on it, but aren't we all hard on our early stuff? Remember that essay you wrote when you were in school, the one that got you an A-plus, the one your teacher called `inspired' - and one day you're going through your drawer and you find it and you read it and your heart sinks and you say, `Man, what was I thinking?' That's how it is with early novels sometimes.
Over the years, I've borrowed a bit from this book - names, places, even a character or two. Close readers may recognize that and will hopefully smile.
Finally, flawed and all, I love this book. There is an energy and risk-taking in Play Dead that I wonder if I still have. Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young. I'm not this guy anymore, but that's okay. None of us are stagnant with our passion and our work. That's a good thing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 045123913X
• ISBN 13: 9780451239136
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 512