The Match by Harlan Coben

This was my first book by Harlan Coben, an author I had long been wanting to read. And The Match seemed a good book to start with. A thriller hovering around the puzzles of ancestral origins, DNA matches, some murders in between and how it all is eventually linked.

Wilde, a boy left abandoned in the woods – with no memory of his parents or family – is dubbed as a modern day Tarzan, rescued aged around 6 by the police. Having grown up in foster care, some 35 years later now he finds a DNA match on a site in a bid to find his biological parents. And as he is doing so, there start running many side stories in parallel. We have the reality TV star Peter Bennet, we have a Richard Levine trial going on, there is the suspense dangling about the supposed birth father Daniel Carter and we have a Chris Taylor with his disguised secret group dispensing justice where the system fails. How all these various scenarios link together to form the picture makes for a curious read.

To start with, it is quite interesting how the story unveils itself gradually. Starting from a jungle boy trying to figure his origins, it initially is all about the DNAs and stuff. It is not until much later that the serial killer actually starts to operate. And when he does, you get some chilling sequences leaving you stunned for a moment with the quick and straight forward work he makes of it.

Harlan Coben makes slick use of modern day technology here. It is simply a beauty to see how our protagonist Wilde uses a hacked Gmail account to get access to Peter’s Instagram! As the book says, primitive yet intelligent! And from there on, getting on to the real identities behind the online ones. Sweet! More and more thrillers these days make a weighty use of tech & in particular, social media. We saw that in Nine Lives – how a dormant facebook account was used to track down a target in hiding. And many other books like A Tidy Ending or The Lies I Tell, they all make intelligent use of the same.

And touching upon these social media platforms, The Match blatantly exposes the extreme dangers of casual trolling in the online world, both for the person indulging in it and the one it is directed towards. It is scary the serious effects it can lead to.

The other aspect worth talking about is the subject of Reality TV that the book addresses predominantly. No doubt, reality tv is a rage these days. How many times have we found ourselves casually saying – ‘it’s all scripted’? And this is what The Match bases a major part of it’s story on – the reality of reality tv. How reality tv takes real lives and turns them into compelling stories, not necessarily true. While a bit exaggerated, it probably acts as an eye opener to those of us who still believe in the authenticity of these shows.

Coming to the main mystery (or should I say mysteries?), it actually got quite confusing for me towards the end. I was kinda scratching my head as to who screwed whom? Another thing I found a bit of a let down was the actual unravelling of the mysteries which seemed one weird revelation after another. Click on the spoiler below to read.

I actually found all of this mess – of all these mysteries quite gross. And not just the mysteries, the relationship of Wilde and Laila, that of Hester & Oren. All quite a put off that is more repulsive than adding any worth to the story. Just not my thing.

Conclusion:

I feel, The Match will appeal to many as it has quite a few suspense elements and twists that keep popping up towards the end. And I think, it is just a personal preference as to the kind of thrillers you like or prefer. At a personal level, all this thing about DNAs, the utter chaos and confusion at the end and some outrageously imaginative revelations just didn’t fit the bill for me. It was just not my kind of book. By the time the author reaches the part about Wilde, I had already lost interest in it. If I have to recommend one thriller for the year, certainly it won’t be this. I will however leave this to an individual preference, so decide for yourself getting your copy The Match.

Looking for a thriller, you may want to give this a look Nine Lives (Peter Swanson)