Six Years by Harlan Coben

It is six years since Jake Fischer's one and only true love Natalie, walked down the aisle with another man. It is six years since our college professor promised his sweetheart that he would leave them alone. Now six years later, when he finds an obituary of her husband in the University news bulletin, Jake Fischer feels he is no longer bound by the promise and decides to attend the funeral and maybe get a glimpse of his soulmate. But something is wrong in the funeral, the widow is not his sweetheart, but an older woman married to the man for years. So what is happening here? What happened to Natalie? Where is she? As Jake digs and looks for things he confronts more and more baffling hidden truths some even connected with his alma mater. How is his alma mater involved in this disappearance of his sweetheart? As Jake goes looking for the place where he met Natalie, he finds everything changed and even people he knew fail to recognise him or remember Natalie. Will Jake find the truth? How would you go about looking for somebody from your past when you can't find them in Facebook? Jake also finds something bizarre, he finds that Natalie's father disappeared a few years before too. What happened to Natalie's father? Are these disappearances related?

This is a recurring theme in Coben books, somebody starts looking for somebody/something from the past, or one who wouldn't let the past be, throwing their ordinary lives into mystery and danger. As they start looking for something they realise that things are not as they seem, and more and more they dig, they put their loved ones and their own life in jeopardy. But one has to know, even if one knows that life would never be same again.

Coben is a master of twists and turns. As usual he creates a multi- layered complicated plot with too many bizarre and seemingly unconnected events that make sense in the end with lots of surprises thrown in. But if you have read most of his books like me, when the revelation comes your likely to say didn't he use the same thing in that book. But there are enough surprises to let this pass.

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My post for Crime Fiction Alphabet S.

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