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Win by Harlan Coben review

The bestselling crime novelist keeps all the plots spinning in his latest caper, but his new vigilante superhero is fatally flawed, says Robert Dex

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Harlan Coben
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Robert Dex @RobDexES
16 March 2021

Harlan Coben has sold 75 million books in his career but I have a sneaking suspicion he would really rather not be a novelist.

I think in his heart of hearts he would much rather be filling speech bubbles and captions of a story from the golden age of comics when no self-respecting superhero went out without a cape, a mask and a thirst for justice.

His latest thriller Win takes the sidekick from his best-selling series about former basketball player Myron Bolitar and recasts him as the main man.

The reader first meets Win – or Windsor Horne Lockwood III to give him his full name – dispensing his own rough justice to a violent misogynist.

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So far, so Batman…and that is before we meet the family butler and the secret lair hidden away in his mansion.

The plot revolves around a Manhattan recluse murdered in a luxury penthouse with an old master on the wall stolen from Win’s family and a suitcase bearing his triple-barrelled initials.

Soon the FBI are on the case and so is Win as two unresolved crimes from decades past are dredged up and connected to the modern murder

Coben keeps all the plots spinning as characters become prime suspects only to fade into the background as the story turns a corner before twisting back and putting them in the frame again.

It is expertly done and the brisk pace keeps the pages turning but some readers will find a stumbling block in the eponymous Win.

Even in a cast of mobster torturers, self-righteous sixties radicals and religious bigots made brutal by grief he is the worst person on the page.

I know not all heroes wears capes but the emotionless vigilante toying with the world from behind his vast personal wealth and self-regard is someone some readers might not want to almost 400 pages with.

WIN by Harlen Coben (Penguin, £20)

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