Shelter / by Harlan Coben

Sunday, 01 July 2012 20:24

Book Facts:

Active Ingredients Suspense. Wisecracks. Chase scenes. Inner-city pick-up basketball. Non-sequitirs. Action (incl. martial arts). School break-ins. Axe-grinding cop. Vengeful bouncers. Back alleys. Hidden passages. Hidden meanings. A dungeon. Gravestones. Heroes. Unquenchable evil. Historical atrocities. Tattoos.

Purpose: Thrill.

Warnings: This book may induce rapid page-turning compulsion (RPC), commonly associated with crackling writing and burning plots. RPC may result in strained wrists, ripped pages, occasional accidental loss of grip on book causing said book to flop like a plate of Jell-O onto floor (or nearby person's head). (Reader may decide white-knuckle story of 15-year old Mickey Bolitar, the boy with the recently dead dad, junkie mom, and missing girlfriend whose whereabouts he’s determined to find, is worth the strained wrists/ripped pages/projectile book arrangement). May cause reader to sneak off when his family's backs are turned to escape into other, quieter room to sit on comfy chair under reading light. Said sneak-reader behavior may occur as early as Chapter 1 when Mickey, on his way to school, is pointed at by legendary local creep/possible-witch-who-eats-children - a.k.a. the Bat Lady - as she stands on her collapsing porch in her tattered white nightgown and hisses in über-creepy mode, “Mickey? Your father isn't dead.”

May cause spontaneous outbursts sounding like: GASP! THIS BOOK IS UNBELIEVABLE! WHAT?!?!

May cause sleeplessness/stubborn unwillingness to submit to sleep until reader reaches teeth-shattering, whiz-bang story end.

May cause reader to believe he is being followed by a dark car with tinted windows at all hours of day, night.

Common side-effects: Chills, tense neck, muscles locked, lockjaw, bug eyes. Rapid breathing. No breathing. Reading through fingers, (particularly when Mickey runs afoul of the owner of the seediest, er, dancing establishment in Newark). Laughter, in response to antics of Mickey's happy-go-lucky, non-sequitir-slinging buddy, Spoon. Cheers each time Mickey’s best friend, the mysterious Goth girl Ema, saves his butt with verbal ingenuity. Moral rage as plot thickens and evil surfaces ever closer (wearing brass knuckles and snarling). Tunnel vision as reader is transported to 20^th century horrors. Sensation of weightlessness as 20^th century horrors and those who resisted, saved others from said horrors, effortlessly wend into missing girlfriend/possibly living father mysteries. Extreme angst/potential tantrums when reader reaches end and realizes he must wait TWO MONTHS UNTIL SEPTEMBER FOR THE SEQUEL, Seconds Away.

Other information: Available as Audiobook CD.

Readalikes include: Reality Check by Peter Abrahams; The Boy Who Dared by Susan Bartoletti; Payback Time by Carl Deuker; Last Shot by John Feinstein.

Included on the D65 Summer Reading List.

(Jarrett, The Loft).

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