“There’s always hope that the lost person could be found, as opposed to the finality of death in a whodunit.”īolitar, who first appeared in 1995’s Deal Breaker, began as an alter ego for Coben, albeit one with some upgrades. The path to the truth about the children’s whereabouts is a typically nonlinear one, but the complex plot twists, although clued and surprising, are secondary to a subtle examination of the continuing emotional aftershocks of the abduction.Ĭoben has made a deliberate choice to emphasize missing person cases, rather than murders, in his stories: “I find them more interesting than the classical mystery thrillers,” he says.

Like those in many of Coben’s other books, the characters are driven by the possibility of hope and redemption-as the parents of the boys, who were both just six when they vanished, are given reason to believe that there could still be a happy ending, after a chance sighting of Patrick. Coben is best-known for his major series lead, Myron Bolitar, a former star basketball player turned sports agent and troubleshooter, who returns in Home in a story that involves Bolitar in the search for two boys, Patrick Moore and Rhys Baldwin, who were kidnapped a decade earlier from the Baldwin’s suburban New Jersey house.

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