Nobody's fool

Samuel "Sami" Kierce, the troubled protagonist of Edgar winner Coben's disappointing sequel to Fool Me Once, has spent decades running from his past. His life changed irrevocably during a backpacking trip through southern Spain when he awoke one morning in Costa del Sol covered in blood, next to the lifeless body of his girlfriend, Anna. Terrified, he fled the scene and returned to the United States, too afraid to confront the situation. Fast forward 22 years: Sami, now an ex-NYPD homicide detective fired for incompetence, has become a private investigator and a new father, struggling with debt while teaching aspiring sleuths at a night school in New York City. When he unexpectedly spots a familiar face in his class, he realizes with a shock that it's Anna. He panics as she flees, igniting a desperate quest for answers that culminates in devastating violence. Coben cleverly interweaves seemingly unconnected side plots involving a famous kidnapping case from 25 years earlier and the release of a convicted murderer, but his characters are flat and his plot twists flatter. This is far from the author's best. Agent: Lisa Vance, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Mar.)

Twenty-two years after waking up in Spain fouled with the blood of his lover of five days, an unlicensed investigator sees her alive once more in this dizzying standalone mystery. Or maybe not. There's no indication that anyone's seen the woman Sami Kierce knew only as Anna since their last night together, which ended when he woke up in her bed clutching a bloody knife. And although the woman who crashes No Shit, Sherlock, the class Sami's run for wannabe investigators ever since getting bounced from the NYPD after a rooftop pursuit left his quarry dead, looks just like Anna--well, it's been over two decades, and all the evidence points to her actually being Victoria Belmond, the daughter of self-made millionaire Archie Belmond. Victoria has her own troubled history. She vanished from a New Year's Eve party she was co-hosting three years before Sami's fling with Anna and wasn't seen again, except maybe by Sami, for 11 long years. Already unsettled because Tad Grayson, who was convicted on Sami's testimony of murdering Nicole Brett, Sami's fiancée, has been released because the court can't trust the testimony of a dishonored cop, Sami meets with Belmond, who offers to share some personal information with him along with $100,000 if he signs a nondisclosure agreement and then offers half a million to dig up the truth behind Victoria's presumed kidnapping. Just what is the truth about Anna? As Sami puts it: "She was Victoria. And she was not." An irresistible hook, endless intricate complications, plucked heartstrings aplenty, and an inevitably disappointing windup. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.