Finished We 8/1/18
This is a hardback that I got at the library book sale last June.
All of Coben's books are worth a look, some more than others, and this one is kind of in the middle.
Interesting premise-
A young woman, Megan/ Cassie, had been 'in the life'- she was a stripper in a seedy Gentlemen's Club in Atlantic City during the 80's. Now, she is a 'soccer mom', married to a lawyer, has two kids, and lives in a 'McMansion' in suburban Connecticut. Yet she occasionally feels 'the pull' of that life. Sometimes things in the suburbs become a bit too 'vanilla' for her.
She also was involved with the love of her life, Ray Levine. This man never forgot her and lost control of his life due to their breakup. He currently works as a photographer that is hired to make it appear that the client is a celebrity. The client is a 'nobody', yet Ray acts (for a hefty fee to his boss, Fester) as if he is a paparazzi photographer getting candid shots of someone very famous.
On a business trip, Cassie's now a realtor, she attends a convention in Atlantic City and goes back to to the club, La Creme. Lorraine, her old bartender/ connection, told her that the man that had been abusing her had come into the bar.
Detective Broome, of the Atlantic City PO, realizes that there has been a serial killer operating in the Atlantic City area for almost two decades. Each year, in March, a man disappears, and he later ascertains that these men all had a history of domestic violence against women. Finally, he narrows it down that these killings have all occurred on Mardi Gras.
Later, Ray is suspected of being the murderer, but the reason he is at the Pine Barrens each year is to celebrate/ morn the loss of his love, Cassie. This is on March 18th, not the day of Mardi Gras.
The novel kicks off when Ray is mugged and his camera is stolen. Lorraine did this because he had inadvertently taken a picture of the latest murdered man.
'The Killing Field' is a real place in Atlantic City called Pine Barrens. This is a wooded area where there were where the iron-works were located during the 18th century.
Eighteen bodies of men that Lorraine murdered are thrown into a well.
Another real place is 'Lucy, The Elephant'. A 65 ft. tall elephant made out of wood, tin, and plaster. A window in the back of the sculpture called, 'pane in the ass'. This was the secret meeting place between the lovers, Cassie and Ray.
Lorraine is the killer, and I kind of suspected this far too early. Usually Coben's endings are completely out of the blue, and I think this one had an ending that's a bit too obvious.
The blurb about the book at Amazon Books-
"Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she’s got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at the age of forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo, pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Broome is a detective who can’t let go of a cold case—a local husband and father who disappeared seventeen years ago—and spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man’s family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up at any moment to step into them.
Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past never truly fades away. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American dream—the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest façades—they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat."
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