Eight years after the death of his wife at the hands of a serial killer, Dr. David Beck receives an anonymous email directing him to a Web site from which it seems his wife is trying to reach him. Is he losing his mind, or is she alive? Steven Weber brings an emotional immediacy to this story of a man caught in a web of lies and corruption; he is compelled by one dictum: Tell no one. Weber, star of television's "Wings," is a natural for the audiobook medium. His voice is seductive and penetrating, giving his interpretation an intimate quality that takes little effort to completely absorb and that thrills the listener. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Eight Years Later

Another girl was about to break my heart.

She had brown eyes and kinky hair and a toothy smile. She also had braces and was fourteen years old and--

"Are you pregnant?" I asked.

"Yeah, Dr. Beck."

I managed not to close my eyes. This was not the first time I'd seen a pregnant teen. Not even the first time today. I've been a pediatrician at this Washington Heights clinic since I finished my residency at nearby Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center five years ago. We serve a Medicaid (read: poor) population with general family health care, including obstetrics, internal medicine, and, of course, pediatrics. Many people believe this makes me a bleeding-heart do-gooder. It doesn't. I like being a pediatrician. I don't particularly like doing it out in the suburbs with soccer moms and manicured dads and, well, people like me.

"What do you plan on doing?" I asked.

"Me and Terrell. We're real happy, Dr. Beck."

"How old is Terrell?"

"Sixteen."

She looked up at me, happy and smiling. Again I managed not to close my eyes.

The thing that always surprises me -- always -- is that most of these pregnancies are not accidental. These babies want to have babies. No one gets that. They talk about birth control and abstinence and that's all fine and good, but the truth is, their cool friends are having babies and their friends are getting all kinds of attention and so, hey, Terrell, why not us?

"He loves me," this fourteen-year-old told me.

"Have you told your mother?"

"Not yet." She squirmed and looked almost all her fourteen years. "I was hoping you could tell her with me."

I nodded. "Sure."

I've learned not to judge. I listen. I empathize. When I was a resident, I would lecture. I would look down from on high and bestow upon patients the knowledge of how self-destructive their behavior was. But on a cold Manhattan afternoon, a weary seventeen-year-old girl who was having her third kid with a third father looked me straight in the eye and spoke an indisputable truth: "You don't know my life."

It shut me up. So I listen now. I stopped playing Benevolent White Man and became a better doctor. I will give this fourteen-year-old and her baby the absolute best care possible. I won't tell her that Terrell will never stay, that she's just cut her future off at the pass, that if she is like most of the patients here, she'll be in a similar state with at least two more men before she turns twenty.

Think about it too much and you'll go nuts.

We spoke for a while -- or, at least, she spoke and I listened. The examining room, which doubled as my office, was about the size of a prison cell (not that I know this from firsthand experience) and painted an institutional green, like the color of a bathroom in an elementary school. An eye chart, the one where you point in the directions the Es are facing, hung on the back of the door. Faded Disney decals spotted one wall while another was covered with a giant food pyramid poster. My fourteen-year-old patient sat on an examining table with a roll of sanitary paper we pulled down fresh for each kid. For some reason, the way the paper rolled out reminded me of wrapping a sandwich at the Carnegie Deli.

The radiator heat was beyond stifling, but you needed that in a place where kids were frequently getting undressed. I wore my customary pediatrician garb: blue jeans, Chuck Taylor Cons, a button-down oxford, and a bright Save the Children tie that screamed 1994. I didn't wear the white coat. I think it scares the kids.

My fourteen-year-old -- yes, I couldn't get past her age -- was a really good kid. Funny thing is, they all are. I referred her to an obstetrician I liked. Then I spoke to her mother. Nothing new or surprising. As I said, I do this almost every day. We hugged when she left. Over her shoulder, her mother and I exchanged a glance. Approximately twenty-five moms take their children to see me each day; at the end of the week, I can count on one hand how many are married.

Like I said, I don't judge. But I do observe.

After they left, I started jotting notes in the girl's chart. I flipped back a few pages. I'd been following her since I was a resident. That meant she started with me when she was eight years old. I looked at her growth chart. I remembered her as an eight-year-old, and then I thought about what she'd just looked like. She hadn't changed much. I finally closed my eyes and rubbed them.

Homer Simpson interrupted me by shouting, "The mail! The mail is here! Oooo!"

I opened my eyes and turned toward the monitor. This was Homer Simpson as in the TV show The Simpsons. Someone had replaced the computer's droning "You've got mail" with this Homer audio wave. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I was about to check my email when the intercom's squawking stopped my hand. Wanda, a receptionist, said, "You're, uh, hmm, you're, uh ... Shauna is on the phone."

I understood the confusion. I thanked her and hit the blinking button. "Hello, sweetums."

"Never mind," she said. "I'm here."

Shauna hung up her cellular. I stood and walked down the corridor as Shauna made her entrance from the street. Shauna stalks into a room as though it offends her. She was a plus-size model, one of the few known by one name. Shauna. Like Cher or Fabio. She stood six one and weighed one hundred ninety pounds. She was, as you might expect, a head-turner, and all heads in the waiting room obliged.

Shauna did not bother stopping at Reception and Reception knew better than to try to stop her. She pulled open the door and greeted me with the words "Lunch. Now."

"I told you. I'm going to be busy."

"Put on a coat," she said. "It's cold out."

"Look, I'm fine. The anniversary isn't until tomorrow anyway."

"You're buying."

I hesitated and she knew she had me.

"Come on, Beck, it'll be fun. Like in college. Remember how we used to go out and scope hot babes together?"

"I never scoped hot babes."

"Oh, right, that was me. Go get your coat."

On the way back to my office, one of the mothers gave me a big smile and pulled me aside. "She's even more beautiful in person," she whispered.

"Eh," I said.

"Are you and she..." The mother made a together motion with her hands.

"No, she's already involved with someone," I said.

"Really? Who?"

"My sister."



We ate at a crummy Chinese restaurant with a Chinese waiter who spoke only Spanish. Shauna, dressed impeccably in a blue suit with a neckline that plunged like Black Monday, frowned. "Moo shu pork in a tortilla shell?"

"Be adventurous," I said.

We met our first day of college. Someone in the registrar's office had screwed up and thought her name was Shaun, and we thus ended up roommates. We were all set to report the mistake when we started chatting. She bought me a beer. I started to like her. A few hours later, we decided to give it a go because our real roommates might be assholes.

I went to Amherst College, an exclusive small-Ivy institution in western Massachusetts, and if there is a preppier place on the planet, I don't know it. Elizabeth, our high school valedictorian, chose Yale. We could have gone to the same college, but we discussed it and decided that this would be yet another excellent test for our relationship. Again, we were doing the mature thing. The result? We missed each other like mad. The separation deepened our commitment and gave our love a new distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder dimension.

Nauseating, I know.

Between bites, Shauna asked, "Can you baby-sit Mark tonight?"

Mark was my five-year-old nephew. Sometime during our senior year, Shauna started dating my older sister, Linda. They had a commitment ceremony seven years ago. Mark was the by-product of, well, their love, with a little help from artificial insemination. Linda carried him to term and Shauna adopted him. Being somewhat old-fashioned, they wanted their son to have a male role model in his life. Enter me.

Next to what I see at work, we're talking Ozzie and Harriet.

"No prob," I said. "I want to see the new Disney film anyway."

"The new Disney chick is a babe and a half," Shauna said. "Their hottest since Pocahontas."

"Good to know," I said. "So where are you and Linda going?"

"Beats the hell out of me. Now that lesbians are chic, our social calendar is ridiculous. I almost long for the days when we hid in closets."

I ordered a beer. Probably shouldn't have, but one wouldn't hurt.

Shauna ordered one too. "So you broke up with what's-her-name," she said.

"Brandy."

"Right. Nice name, by the way. She have a sister named Whiskey?"

"We only went out twice."

"Good. She was a skinny witch. Besides, I got someone perfect for you."

"No, thanks," I said.

"She's got a killer bod."

"Don't set me up, Shauna. Please."

"Why not?"

"Remember the last time you set me up?"

"With Cassandra."

"Right."

"So what was wrong with her?"

"For one thing, she was a lesbian."

"Christ, Beck, you're such a bigot."

Her cell phone rang. She leaned back and answered it, but her eyes never left my face. She barked something and flipped the mouthpiece up. "I have to go," she said.

I signaled for the check.

"You're coming over tomorrow night,&qu... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Adult/High School-Dr. David Beck's wife was murdered by a serial killer, or so the police told him. After eight years of struggles with his grief, on the anniversary of their first kiss, a message appears on David's home computer, a phrase he shared only with her. A current, digital image of Elizabeth follows and David's hopes soar that she is alive. His search for her is hampered by the FBI, who consider him a suspect in her death, and by a billionaire whose son plays a role in the plot. Coben has written a gripping thriller with page-turning suspense and enough humor to break the tension on occasion. His use of state-of-the-art technological devices to move the story along will keep YAs reading. Those familiar with Coben's "Myron Bolitar" series (Dell) will welcome his new protagonist.

Katherine Fitch, Rachel Carson Middle School, Fairfax, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

“Suspense at its finest...” —Jeffrey Deaver

“A can’t-put-it-down page-turner...”—Lisa Scottoline

“Non-stop action with plot twists galore...”—Phillip Margolin

“A thriller of runaway tension...”—Iris Johansen


From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Every writer likes to stretch his legs, and here Coben, author of seven acclaimed Myron Bolitar mysteries (Darkest Fear, etc.), stretches his. He doesn't quite kick his reputation aside in the process. This thriller, Coben's first non-Bolitar novel, is a breezy enough read, but it's not up to snuff. It's got a nifty setup, though. David Beck and Elizabeth Parker, just-married childhood sweethearts, are vacationing at the Beck family retreat when Beck is knocked unconscious and Elizabeth is kidnapped. Cut to eight years later: Beck is a young physician working with ghetto kids in Manhattan, and Elizabeth, we learn, is dead, victim of a serial killer known as KillRoy. Or is she? For immediately after two bodies eight years old are uncovered on the Beck land, Beck receives a series of e-mails apparently from Elizabeth. His frantic search to find out if she lives dovetails with the equally frenzied efforts of cops to pin Elizabeth's murder on Beck, as well as the antic moves of a mysterious billionaire an old friend of the Beck family and his two hired thugs to frame Beck for that murder. Beck finds himself a man on the run from the cops his only ally a black drug dealer whose child he's treating for hemophilia caught in an overcomplicated tangle of lies and vengeance. Coben knows how to move pages, and he generates considerable suspense, but there's little new here. The narrative style is cloned from James Patterson, alternating first-person with third. The villains, particularly the billionaire and a Chinese martial artist, are as old as mid-Elmore Leonard or even Chandler. The black drug dealer isn't a character, he's a plot device, and the climax packs the emotional wallop of a strong episode of The Rockford Files. (June 19)Forecast: Heavy-hitting blurbs from Jeffery Deaver and Phillip Margolin, among others, indicate more about the solidarity of the mystery community than about this book's excellence, but should attract browsers. The publisher will pitch this as a summer beach read, and it's not a bad one. In fact, it may outsell Coben's mysteries, despite its flaws.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

This thriller moves from heartbreaking to heartstopping without missing a beat. A young couple takes a moonlight swim at their family's lakeside property. The wife swims to the dock. The husband's reverie is broken by a scream and the sight of his wife struggling. The husband, once he flails to the dock, is knocked unconscious. His wife is viciously branded and murdered. Eight years later, Dr. David Beck, a walk-on in his own life, gets a call from the sheriff saying that two bodies have been found buried near the lake. Something buried with the bodies links them to Beck. And Beck receives an e-mail on his anniversary, directing him to a Web street camera. His wife appears, pleading with him to tell no one he's seen her again. Edgar winner Coben makes Beck (and the reader) walk a tightrope where one false move or word can spell doom. A technologically savvy thriller. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Coben's latest thriller is the book everyone should take to the beach this summer. David Beck and his wife, Elizabeth, are celebrating their anniversary when things go horribly wrong, as Elizabeth is kidnapped and Beck is injured. Her battered body is later found, apparently the latest victim of a serial killer. Eight years later, still devastated by his loss, Beck receives a cryptic E-mail with a mysterious hyperlink that will activate at a specific time. When it activates, it shows a current video feed on a street that Beck can't identify. He watches in shock as Elizabeth looks up at the camera and mouths, "I'm sorry." What follows is Beck's quest for the truth, and what he finds will destroy his life as he knows it. Tell everyone to read Tell No One. Highly recommended for all public libraries.
- Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Harlan Coben is the winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards. His critically acclaimed novels have been published in thirty-three languages around the world and have been number one bestsellers in more than half a dozen countries. In addition to the Myron Bolitar series (Deal Breaker, Drop Shot, Fade Away, Back Spin, One False Move, The Final Detail, Darkest Fear, and the upcoming Promise Me), he is also the author of Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance, Just One Look, and The Innocent.


From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

“Suspense at its finest...”
–Jeffrey Deaver

“A can’t-put-it-down page-turner...”
–Lisa Scottoline

“Non-stop action with plot twists galore...”
–Phillip Margolin

“A thriller of runaway tension...”
–Iris Johansen --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive.

Everyone tells him it's time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible -- that somewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive.

Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope.

But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret -- and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

“Suspense at its finest...” —Jeffrey Deaver

“A can’t-put-it-down page-turner...”—Lisa Scottoline

“Non-stop action with plot twists galore...”—Phillip Margolin

“A thriller of runaway tension...”—Iris Johansen


From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.