Miracle Cure

Started this on the train south on Thursday and finished it in bed this morning. My third Coben book after Tell No One & The Woods and surprisingly given the introduction, possibly my favourite of the three. I felt some of the lesser characters in the first two books were shallow and stereotypical and therefore just annoying - not something I found in Miracle Cure.

Here's the authors rather unusual introduction:

Okay, if this is the first book of mine you're going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It's okay. I'll wait.

If you're still here, please know that I havent read Miracle Cure in at least twenty years. I didn't want to rewrite it and pass it off as a new book. I hate when authors do that. So, this is, for better or worse, the exact book I wrote when I was in my early twenties, just a naive lad working in the travel industry and wondering if I should follow my father and brother and go to (shudder) law school.

I'm hard on it, but aren't we all hard on our early stuff? Remember that essay you wrote when you were in school, the one that got you an A-plus, the one your teacher called "inspired" - and one day you're going through your drawer and you find it and you read it and your heart sinks and you say, "Man, what was I thinking"? That's how it is with early novels sometimes.

This one is a bit preachy in spots and sometimes dated (though, in truth, I wish the medical stuff was more dated, but that's another matter). And you might think I based part of this on a real-life situation. I didn't. This book predates that event. I won't say more, because it could be a spoiler.

Finally, flawed and all, I love this book. There is an energy and risk-taking in Miracle Cure that I wonder if I still have. I'm not this guy anymore, but that's okay. None of us are stagnant with our passion and our work. That's a good thing.

Enjoy.

Harlan Coben