Harlan Coben is a great master of suspense, and his most recent book, I Will Find You, does not disappoint. As with any fast-paced thriller, it’s always hard to determine which plot points to reveal in a review. Ten pages in, you’re already in spoiler territory. But, you have to explain the basic story, so I’ll try to keep you guessing while setting up Coben narrative.
The book opens with us meeting David Burroughs, a convict in his thirties who has been in prison for five years for murdering his three-year-old son, Matthew. David has shut down, in emotional terms, resigned to spending the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The evidence was overwhelming, however, and everyone in his life, even his ex-wife, began to wonder if he didn’t, indeed, kill his son in some sort of blackout or fugue state. He was badly beaten when he first arrived, so he’s been placed in a lone cell in an isolation area of the prison. He refuses all visitors. He’s a dead man walking, more or less.
Then, his ex-sister-on-law, Rachel, a woman he always felt close to, shows up for a visit and he reluctantly agrees to see her. She has a shocking piece of news for him, or at least a shocking guess to share. Showing him a photo snapped by a friend at an amusement park, she points to the image of a little boy in the frame. It’s Matthew. He’s alive! How could this be? There was a dead body in Matthew’s bed five years ago. Could that have been another boy?
At first, David thinks his ex-sister-in-law has gone crazy, and that he, too, is probably just falling into a dangerous delusion that somehow, his son is out there while he’s rotting away in prison. Rachel says she’ll come back soon, and they’ll discuss a plan to find Matthew. Meanwhile, a deranged killer who comes from a very wealthy family, picks a fight with David—at which point we see that David can fight pretty well after five years behind bars. He puts the other guy in the infirmary.
David tries to figure out a way to escape from prison. That’s easier said than done, of course, but he has access to a pathway that most inmates don’t. The warden is his godfather. David’s father was a cop in Revere, Massachusetts, and the warden was his partner for years. The warden’s son was David’s best friend growing up. He never asked to see the warden for five years, but now he wants a meeting. He almost doesn’t make it, because the rich guy who tried to beat him up bribes a guard to kill him.
And then… we’re getting into spoiler territory… except to say that David does escape from the prison and the rest of the book is spent with him on the run, desperately searching for his son, who may not even exist. Rachel helps him, and we find out that she has her own personal reasons for doing so, beyond the fact that she loved her nephew.
Two oddball but very effective FBI agents are on the hunt. To me, they’re a weak part of the story. They have this too-clever-by-half banter that I found irritating, but they do their part to ratchet up the suspense. The Boston mafia plays a part in all this, too, but I won’t say how. That would be really spoiling it.
I Will Find You is a non-stop suspenser. Coben is great at this. He keeps the plot lean and moving forward at all times. Plus, Coben understands something that not all thriller writers get, even very successful ones: Suspense works best when you care about the characters. Though he’s highly economical in the storytelling, you quickly develop a strong feeling for David and Rachel. You get absorbed by other character-driven aspects of the plot, such as the connection the warden feels for David.
If you like a good thriller, this one’s for you.