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Just One Look
Cover of Just One Look
Just One Look
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An ordinary snapshot causes a mother’s world to unravel in this shocking thriller from the bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger.

When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong-a photo from at least twenty years ago with a man in it who looks strikingly like her husband, Jack. And though Jack denies it's him, he disappears that night, taking the photo with him. Now, to save her family from a fierce, silent killer who will stop at nothing to get the photo, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past....
An ordinary snapshot causes a mother’s world to unravel in this shocking thriller from the bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger.

When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong-a photo from at least twenty years ago with a man in it who looks strikingly like her husband, Jack. And though Jack denies it's him, he disappears that night, taking the photo with him. Now, to save her family from a fierce, silent killer who will stop at nothing to get the photo, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past....
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  • From the book Scott Duncan sat across from the killer.

    The windowless room of thundercloud gray was awkward and still, stuck in that the lull when the music first starts and neither stranger is sure how to begin the dance. Scott tried a noncommittal nod. The killer, decked out in prison-issue orange, simply stared. Scott folded his hands and put them on the metal table. The killer—his file said he was Monte Scanlon, but there was no way that was his real name—might have done likewise had his hands not been cuffed. Why, Scott wondered yet again, am I here?

    His specialty was prosecuting corrupt politicians—something of a vigorous cottage industry in his home state of New Jersey—but three hours ago, Monte Scanlon, a mass executioner by any standards, had finally broken his silence to make a demand.

    That demand?

    A private meeting with Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Duncan.

    This was strange for a large variety of reasons, but here were two: one, a killer should not be in a position to make demands; two, Scott had never met or even heard of Monte Scanlon.

    Scott broke the silence. “You asked to see me?”

    “Yes.”

    Scott nodded, waited for him to say more. He didn’t. “So what can I do for you?”

    Monte Scanlon maintained the stare. “Do you know why I’m here?”

    Scott glanced around the room. Besides Scanlon and himself, four people were present. Linda Morgan, the United States attorney, leaned against the back wall trying to give off the ease of Sinatra against a lamppost. Standing behind the prisoner were two beefy, nearly identical prison guards with tree-stump arms and chests like antique armoires. Scott had met the two cocky agents before, had seen them go about their task with the sereneness of yoga instructors. But today, with this well-shackled prisoner, even these guys were on edge. Scanlon’s lawyer, a ferret reeking of checkout-counter cologne, rounded out the group. All eyes were on Scott.

    “You killed people,” Scott answered. “Lots of them.”

    “I was what is commonly called a hit man. I was”—Scanlon paused—“an assassin for hire.”

    “On cases that don’t involve me.”

    “True.”

    Scott’s morning had started off normal enough. He’d been drafting a subpoena on a waste- disposal executive who was paying off a small-town mayor. Routine matter. Everyday graft in the Garden State of New Jersey. That had been, what, an hour, an hour and a half ago? Now he sat across the bolted-down table from a man who had murdered—according to Linda Morgan’s rough estimate—one hundred people.

    “So why did you ask for me?”

    Scanlon looked like an aging playboy who might have squired a Gabor sister in the fifties. He was small, wizened even. His graying hair was slicked back, his teeth cigarette-yellow, his skin leathery from midday sun and too many long nights in too many dark clubs. No one in the room knew his real name. When captured, his passport read Monte Scanlon, an Argentinean national, age fifty-one. The age seemed about right, but that would be about it. His fingerprints had not popped up in the NCIC computer banks. Facial recognition software had come up with a big goose egg.

    “We need to speak alone.”

    “This is not my case,” Scott said again. “There’s a U.S. attorney assigned to you.”

    “This has nothing to do with her.”

    “And it does with me?”

    Scanlon leaned forward. “What I’m about to tell you,” he...

Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    March 29, 2004
    Just one look at Coben's latest stand-alone thriller (after No Second Chance
    ) highlights the author's customary strengths (swift pacing, strong lead characters) but also his weaknesses, including limited originality and, in this case, a plot so complicated that many final pages are devoted to sorting it out. The premise is simple enough: suburban housewife Grace Lawson collects some pictures at the local Photomat; inexplicably, one is an old print depicting her husband, Jack, with other college students; when Grace shows the photo to Jack, he drives away—and disappears. Grace's hunt for her missing husband, whom we learn has been kidnapped (but why? and Coben fans will note that the author's last novel also hinged on a kidnapped family member), sweeps her back into a nightmare she thought she'd escaped: the evening years ago when she survived a rock concert rampage, occasioned by a shooting that left many dead. Meanwhile, Eric Wu, a—dare we say?—inscrutable martial-arts killer who has snatched Jack for reasons unknown, menaces assorted folk. Eventually Grace, aided by a Gotti-like mobster whose child was killed in the rampage, gloms on to Wu, as well as on to Jack's sister, a high-powered attorney who, it turns out, is representing the guy who started the rampage by firing his gun. Only he didn't start the rampage after all, and then there's the rock star who vanished after the shooting and resultant mayhem—what's he now doing on Grace's doorstep? This is all as complicated as a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and about as hard to figure out, although in the midst of the murk there are some wonderful character touches. Coben can write thrillers that lift readers off their seats; this one, alas, will have them slumping. Agent, Lisa Erbach Vance at the Aaron Priest Agency
    . (May)

    Forecast:
    This will hit lists hard, pushed by a
    Today author appearance and major ad/promo, but readers looking for the kind of thrills found in
    No Second Chance won't be happy.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    June 7, 2004
    Coben's latest thriller (after No Second Chance
    ) is a riveting, albeit perplexing, nightmare that finds hapless New Jersey wife and mother Grace Lawson dealing with an assortment of fearful developments, including a missing spouse, a terrifyingly adaptable hit man, deceitful friends, hidden agendas and ghosts from the past. Reader MacDuffie wisely takes her cues from Coben's prose. When he describes a policeman as "patronizing," she lends just the right vocal inflection to his lines, then quickly switches to the sarcastic tones of feisty Grace. And for the novel's most ingratiating character, Charlene Swain, MacDuffie's voice subtly shifts from vague to vital as the Percodan-popping, bored-to-tears housewife rises above her ennui to give Grace a helping hand in combating the wicked hit man Wu. Coben fills his thriller with unoriginal characters (including a murderer on death row, a rock-and-roller in comeback mode and a gentrified mobster with revenge on his mind), but MacDuffie's skillful interpretation brings the characters and action into sharp focus. Simultaneous release with the Dutton hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 29).

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Just One Look
Just One Look
Harlan Coben
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