Darkest Fear

From the Number One bestselling creator of the hit Netflix series Missing You

By: Harlan Coben

Narrated by: Tim Machin

Life isn't going well for Myron Bolitar. His business is struggling, and his father, recently recovered from a heart attack, is facing his own mortality - and forcing Myron to face it too. Then Emily Downing, Myron's college sweetheart, reappears in his life with devastating news: her thirteen-year-old son Jeremy is gravely ill and can be saved only by a bone-marrow transplant - from a donor who has vanished without trace.

Before Myron can absorb this revelation, Emily hits him with an even bigger shocker: Jeremy is Myron's son, conceived the night before Emily's wedding to another man. Staggered by the news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor. But for Myron, finding the only person who can save the boy's life means cracking open a mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and a cat-and-mouse game between an ambitious reporter and the FBI.

Read by Tim Machin

(p) 2004 Orion Publishing Group©2003 Harlan Coben

Critic reviews

Coben's genius - and his most frustrating trick - is that he makes it all seem so obvious, then kicks your legs away before the end

This is the first of the highly-regarded Bolitar books I've read and now I understand what the fuss is all about. Coben's narrative voice in this novel is fresh and surprising, equally at home with sentiment and satire. The twists in the plot are superb

It is to the author's credit that although Myron is an immensely likeable and sympathetic character, he is just as convincing when he turns nasty

[Coben is] a highly original writer, with a handful of brilliant characters at his disposal . . . Hilarious and bursting with suspense, Darkest Fear is also an exceptionally moving novel

[Coben] demonstrates his ability to take a story to a new level of originality, intrigue and surprise . . . Riveting stuff, with some of the sharpest dialogue you'll read in a thriller. In this case, the hype is an understatement - this is in a class of its own

The novel rattles along at a breakneck pace and as usual the dialogue crackles with sparkling one-liners. Coben is on top form here . . . All his characters leap off the page and I was truly disappointed by the fact that eventually this terrific novel had to end