Review: Vivien Horler

Nobody’s Fool, by Harlan Coben (Century)

If, for 20 years, you have believed someone was dead and then saw her in front of you, you would be forgiven for reacting with shock. But chasing after her is probably not the most useful reaction.

Sami Kierce grew up wanting to be a physician. But on a post-college trip to Europe with a bunch of friends, something happens that alters the trajectory of his life.

When Nobody’s Fool opens, Sami is a 40-something ex-cop – booted off the force – doing freelance private-investigator work and teaching criminology to assorted students in night classes in Manhattan.

One night he looks up at his class and notices a woman at the back, a woman with whom he fell in love 20 years ago on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

Not only does he believe she is dead – he believes he killed her. And yet there she is. When she realises he has recognised her, she bolts.

Sami goes after her, and after catching her at the door of the college, to her apparent fright, he is able to drop a tracker into her coat pocket.

She pulls away and flees. Soon she is on an interstate heading towards Connecticut, followed by Sami in his skedonk. He soon arrives in an upmarket area of boutiques and mansions and thick hedges.

“My old clunker of a car fits into these wealthy environs like a cigarette in a health club,” he muses.

Then the tracker stops moving.

There is no way Sami is going to get through the gate into what appears to be a small palace. He figures maybe he can reach the house through the woods.

However the landowners have excellent security, and dogs. Sami is caught, but his recording of the security guys’ threats to shoot him persuades them to let him go.

He flees.

Turns out, 22 years ago in a Costa de Sol nightclub a 21-year-old Sami met Anna, an American. She’s gorgeous, sinuous and totally out of his class, but she seems to fancy him. They dance, they go home to her flat together, and spend the next five days on the beach, in nightclubs, dancing and taking drugs and having a wonderful time.

Until one hot morning heading towards noon, Sami wakes up, covered in something sticky. Fully awake, he finds he has a knife in his hand, and Anna is next to him, bathed in blood.

Sami screams, and Bazz, their drug supplier, bursts in. Bazz confirms Anna is dead. Distraught, Sami goes to the police and then phones his father, who tells him to get on the next plane home, straightaway.

Sami does. And here we are, 22 years later. The trauma of that Spanish summer morning has thrown his life off course. He gave up on the idea of medical studies, took to drink, joined the police, got fired.

Yet here is Anna in his criminology class, very much not dead.

Sami is not going to let it rest. But the story he uncovers is very twisty indeed, involving drugs, human trafficking, and much else besides.

Coben’s Nobody’s Fool is not to be confused with Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo, published in 1993 (which I loved) and made into a movie starring Paul Newman. There was also a 2018 romcom film written and directed by Tyler Perry, also no relation.

I read this Nobody’s Fool – a sequel to Coben’s Fool Me Once published in 2016 – on an autumn beach. It was perfect holiday reading – gripping and with a couple of outrageous turns of plot. Masterful and great fun.

• Nobody’s Fool is one of Exclusive Books’s top reads for April.