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Just One Look

by Harlan Coben

In Just One Look, Harlan Coben provides his readers with one of the most frightening and evil characters to be found in fiction. A man of great strength, a man who knows how to reach and use the most vulnerable points of the human body to inflict pain, torture and death. A man who doesn't need a gun, using only his hands and fingers as a weapon. A man who knows how to take you by surprise. A man with no conscience. A formidable opponent indeed, and Mr. Coben uses him to full advantage.

As is all too often the way these days, authors (or their editors) seem to pluck titles out of thin air, having little or nothing to do with the actual content of a story. Just One Look could refer to the character above, it could refer to the invidious photograph which sets everything in motion, it could refer to a number of things – the point is that it's certainly not specific to the tale. Nonetheless, this is a story that will be remembered, regardless of its name.

Grace Lawson is a happily married housewife with two children. That is, until she goes to the Photomat and picks up the latest set of photographs – snapshots which are mostly of her children picking apples. Except for one. Buried in one set of prints is a picture that doesn't belong there – a snapshot of a group of young people including her husband Jack. And the strange girl beside him is looking at Jack with an unmistakable expression on her face – a look of love. That in itself wouldn't be unusual – the photo had obviously been taken long before Grace had met him; the man in the photograph was very young. But the girl had an 'X' across her face. When Grace shows Jack the picture, he denies it's him, then takes off – and doesn't return.

Eric Wu was a man who used his computer skills in the online personals and dating programs – not to find a partner, but to find susceptible victims. Some women, but mostly men, only because Wu had discovered that men were easier to fool. Wu used various personas and names as expected, female or male, and pictures or photos from any source available. He was very careful. Nobody with children. Nobody with friendly neighbors. Nobody with close relatives. Nobody with any ties which could mean the targeted individual would be quickly missed. And right now he needed someone near the geographical location of the Lawson home.

Rocky Conwell, a former football player, is now playing detective, following Jack Lawson's mini-van. When Jack succumbs to a Chinese man and is stuffed into the trunk of a car, Rocky attempts to interfere – only to be easily murdered and stuffed into the trunk of a car himself.

Grace gradually realizes that the incriminating photograph has connections to a disastrous event happening a number of years ago – one that left her with her present limp. She was attending a rock concert where the lead band was inexplicably delayed for several hours. Grace was also at the very front of the crowd near the stage when somebody fired off a gun, and that led to the crowd of thousands going completely out of control with the result of Grace being felled and trampled. When she woke in a hospital days later, she was assured she was lucky to be alive. Escaping from this country with all its horrible memories, Grace met her husband Jack in the south of France. Only now does she know he was escaping too.

Carl Vespa is a crime lord. His one connection with Grace is that he lost his only son at that same concert. Charlaine Swain, her husband Mike, Officer Daley, Captain Perlmutter, Sandra Koval, who claims to be Jack's sister, Scott Duncan, who claims one of the women in the photograph is his sister - these names and many others all play out their roles in the story, until at last Grace and her husband face Eric Wu.

Just One Look ends with everything tied up neatly. The bad guys are overcome and the good guys win out – in spite of
heavy losses. Harlan Coben leaves his readers breathless and screaming aloud at times, but brings the whole mess to a very satisfactory conclusion. Just One Look stands by itself as one of the most frightening murder mysteries ever written. A word of advice – don't read it alone at night.

Alan Paul Curtis

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