Blog 3

After the meeting with Senator Cross, Myron is forced into the blue Cadillac by one of his snoopers. Aaron, a muscular bully for the Ache brothers, questions his involvement in Valerie Simpson's death. Aaron threatens harm to those who associate with Myron. Roger Quincy, an accused stalker of Valerie, is brought into the police station and asks for Myron Bolivar as his lawyer. Oddly, he recounts the day of the murder from his own perspective and only recalls seeing Valerie dead in Myron's arms.
Win calls Myron and asks him to meet him at a hotel where he has tracked Duane. They watch him from a hotel room peephole directly across from a room that Duane had entered. Myron peers out the peephole and sees Duane in the arms of th mother of one of the accused murderers of Alexander Cross. What's up in Duanes's life?

Blog 2

Myron tries to speak with Valeris's psychiatrist , Dr, Julia Abramson, who declines to offer specific answers, invoking doctor/client privelege. He receives little information, and tries to conctact Alexander Cross's friends, the deceased fiance of Valerie Simpson. One of Alexander's friends, Gregory Caufield, agrees to meet with him. Upon arriving at Gregory's office, he is led to a meeting with Senator Bradley Cross, father of the deceased. The Senator discloses the information that his son, Alexander, was on drugs, heroin and cocaine. His son's body was found with a syringe, but he stands by the story that the missing teenager, Errol Swade, killed his son with a switchblade. Questions are asked regarding the murder and what happened to the accused and the accused's parents. Was Senator Cross a grieving father or had he silenced a detailed investigation into his son's death?

Blog 1

Harlan Coben has written several novels that involve Myron Bolitar, a sports agent and his best friend, Win. In this novel, both characters are watching their new client, a street kid from the rough side of New York, pummel his opponents in the U.S. Tennis Open competition. The crowd panics when a shot rings out, and a young woman collapses in the "Food Court". Valerie Simpson, the victim, had been a child protegee in the tennis world, but had suffered a breakdown and quickly disappeared from the media and athletic events. Duane Richwood's dazzling tennis serves have attracted the eyes of sponsors and this new star stands to become one of the highest paid tennis athletes in the world.
Duane becomes a suspect in Valerie's murder when the police find his name and number as the last entry in her calender notebook after he had denied knowing her. Myron visits Valerie's mother and tries to find about about Valerie's life, but is forced to leave by her new husband. With further research, he does find that Valerie had been engaged to a Senator's son who had been murdered the night before their wedding. After the murder, one of the suspects was killed by the police and the other boy disappeared.
Meanwhile, Myron is being followed by two men in a light blue Cadillac. Myron and Win are able to corner them and find that they had been hired by the Ache brothers who run TruPro, sport agents with ties to the Mafia. Duane admits to a relationship with Valerie even though he loves his high school sweetheart, Wanda, with whom he has a son.
Myron reviews the press reports of Alexander Cross's murder, Valerie Simpson's fiance. Errol Swade, the mssing fugitive, was not found, and the editorials demanding his arrest dwindled as time passed. Myron found a news article about the young man who was killed by the police the evening of the murder. His transcript and teacher reports indicated that Curtis Yeller, the other suspect, had been a student with a 3.9 average who rarely missed school. Was this a boy who would kill a unsuspecting victim?

Blog 4

Dr. Maura Isles goes to see Peter Lucas, a Boston Tribune reporter, whom Joe Roke wanted as the media representative for a live interview from the hospital. They exchange information that both had gleaned from their respective investigations, his on the historical connections of Olena and Joe, and her medical perspective from the autopsy. Detective Rizzoli is troubled by the unknown Mila and decides to place an advertisement in Confidental, a tabloid found on the back seat of Roke's car. Surveillance photos did show a third head in the back seat of his car when he had stopped for gas in Virginia.

Maura brings Peter Lucas to Jane and Gabriel's apartment, and they share conjectures about Balentree's involvement into this black market trade involving women, weapons, and drugs. A mysterious woman contacts Jane's number left in the Confidential, but hangs up. Shortly, the bell rings at Jane's apartment and Mila appears at her doorstep. Mila is extremely frightened, but she does show Jane a VCR tape confiscated from the house in Asburn. A hidden camera in the main bedroom of the home caught the murder of a young girl by a prominent man from Washington. Mila informs Detective Rizzoli tha the three of them, Joe, Olena and herself, each had a copy before they were separated.

The house door bell sounds again, and Jane sees that FBI Agent John Barsanti is at her door. Quickly, she realizes that Mila will run again, grabs her gun and baby Regina, and follows Mila through the open bedroom window. Jane leads them to Peter Lucas's apartment where she is disarmed and discovers that Peter has been a paid informant for those in search of Mila and the three tapes. Mila escapes through the bathroom window, but Detective Rizzoli and her daughter Regina are forced by a second assailant into the woods and death.

Meanwhile, Gabriel is frantically trying to locate his wife by reviewing her last known steps and cell phone contacts. He is disturbed by Peter Lucas's responses to his questions after finding Lucas's number on Jane's cell phone call list and heads over to his apartment. Jane had been forced to dig a grave for herself and Regina deep in the woods behind Lucas's townhouse. She had looked for her weapon hidden in the diaper bag, but found nothing.

After Gabriel and Agent Baranti question Peter Lucas, Gabriel searches through his townhouse and finds Jane's car keys behind the sofa. He hears three gunshots behind the apartment and dashes off into the woods. Sharpened senses lead Gabriel farther into the woods where Jane stumbles forward holding Regina in her arms followed by Mila clutching Jane's weapon.

The novel's resolution includes the prosecution of the murderer and his loss of the federal job, Peter Lucas's fine and arraignment, and Mila's debriefing. Federal agents retrace the Russian girls illegal entry into the United States and, with Mila's help, locate the body of a young girl killed durng the journey. The story leads one to question how many young girls vanish in the hands of unscrupulous men posing as agents of promise and good fortune.

Blog 3

Throughout the story, there is much distrust between the federal agencies and the Boston police department. Gunshots ring out from inside the hospital as federal SWAT teams infiltrate the area and kill both Olena and Joe in a savage assault. Detective Jane Rizzoli is whisked off to Brigham Hospital, and her husband slips off to be with her for the delivery of their baby girl. A turf war results between Dr. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner, and FBI Agent John Barsanti who wants to take the corpses to Washington for the autopsy. Strangely, the Governer intervenes before Maura completes the autopsy, and the bodies are taken away.

Both Jane and her husband, Gabriel, have trouble sleeping due to nightmares of the ordeal and their newborn's cries. The Boston police discover that a ballistics check found a match between the weapon used by the hospital infiltrator who tried to kill Olena and a multiple shooting in Asburn, Virginia. The federal takedown team confiscated all the weapons found at the hostage crisis, calling it a matter of national security. One of the Boston PD's supervisors brings the file of the Russian women's massacre to a secluded meeting attended by Deective Rizzoli and Agent Dean. What happened in Asburn and who is involved?

Thanks to the help of her mother, Jane is able to travel to Asburn, Virginia with her husband. She is haunted by dreams and the memory of Olena's last words, "Mila knows." Detective Eddie Wardlow of Asburn isn't pleased to see them despite their supervisor's clearance. He admits to knowledge of a connection between the owner of the "girls' house" and Balentree, one of the nation's biggest defense contractors. No fingerprints of the dead women were found on file, adding to the certainty that the girls were undocumented aliens.

Jane and Gabriel leave the station and travel to the vacated house. It is late afternoon, and the house has been charred by a fire on the second floor. They remove the padlocks on the house and see that furniture and rugs have been cleared away. It is still easy to imagine the horror of that evening as evidenced by the blood stains and holes in the wall. Darkness approaches and, as they leave, bright lights blind Jane and Gabriel on the porch. Agent John Barsanti takes them downtown to a federal headquarters for questioning. What's up now?

Blog 2

This novel shifts from the hostage ordeal to the indignities suffered by the imprisoned young Russian girls as seen through the eyes of Olena and Mila. The Mother is in charge and forces them to travel by a chauffered van to a boat docked near the Potomac River in Virginia.

After "Jane Doe" calls the radio station, an unidentified man walks past police barricades and into the hospital. The FBI identify him as Joseph Roke, a man with an arrest warrant for killing a policeman. Together, the pair issue several stipulations for the release of a few hostages, one of which includes a live feed to the media. Meanwhile, Gabriel Dean is frantic about his wife who is in the midst of labor. Added to this concern is a television reporter's revelation that Jane Rizzoli is a police detective. Gabriel decides to go in alone as a negotiator, despite the cancellation of any such action by the feds.

The story transitions to the Russian captives where two dark-clothed killers enter the house and kill Mother and the girls except for Mila and Olena who had escaped to the roof. The two girls find money in Mother's closet and head into the woods. They are picked up on the road by a lone man, Joe, who takes them to his cabin for a short while before leaving the home for a safer place.

Vanish

The saga begins with the forced captivity and abuse of several young female Russians. They came to America under the false pretense that they would be part of the American dream. Instead, they are locked away and forced to be a part of a prostitution ring for wealthy clients.

Maura Isles, a medical examiner, discovers a "live" corpse from the Boston Harbor in a body bag. After Jane Doe is taken to the hospital, she shoots a security guard and seizes several hostages including pregnant Detective Jane Rizzoli. Rizzoli's husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, is frantic as he tries to negotiate their release. Tension mounts as the negotiating team discovers that the "guard" is not an employee of the hospital and has fingerprints not found on the federal data base.

The autoposy of the dead man reveals a scorpion tattoo on the center of his back. This type of tattoo is often found on marines assigned to killer missions. The tattoo would serve as a means of identification if the exremities were severed from the body.