NOBODY'S FOOL

5 stars out of 5

This is the second book in the author's "Detective Sami Kierce" series, and despite thinking I'd never read the first, I took it on just because I've read and loved several of his other books. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. But after I finished, I looked back through my old reviews, and surpise - I did read the first one, Fool Me Once, back in 2016. No surprise, then, that I don't remember a thing from that one. But rereading my review of it did leave me thoroughly confused, because nowhere in that review did I even mention Sami Kierce - nor, I found after I checked, did his name appear in any reviews by other readers I checked. Huh?

Anyway, no matter where Sami was hidden in that first book, he's moved front and center here. A former cop who got thrown off the force for transgressions, he spent time in Spain right after college and before medical school, where he met and had a serious fling with a girl named Anna, he wakes up in a post-drug fog with her bloody body next to him and a blood-covered knife in his own hand.

More than 20 years later, he's happily married to Molly, with whom he has a young son Henry, teaching true crime night classes and doing private detective work for a law firm that specializes in divorce. One night, a woman shows up at the class - and she catches Sami's eye immediately: it's Anna, the woman he is certain he murdered all those years ago. She runs away, but when Sami and his class of true crime clue-hunters learn she was a victim of a supposed kidnapping years ago, Sami goes to meet the uber-rich family, who hire him to find out what really happened to her.

Amid all this, the man who was convicted of killing Sami's former fiance (yeah, Sami gets around) has just been released from prison; while and Sami and class of true crime clue-hunters think the guy is guilty as sin, the guy wants Sami to clear his not-so-good name by finding the real killer. 

If you think all this is complex, it is; but I assure you it's easy to follow, especially as clues start falling into place - right up to the ending (a cliffhanger of sorts; to be continued, methinks). All in all, an entertaining read - and I'm already looking forward to seeing the next installment. For now, I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-release copy of this one.

Noody's Fool by Harlan Coben (Grand Central Publishing, March 2025); 352 pp.