Mark Derricutt's Disturbing Thoughts
The Innocent
posted Saturday, 2 July 2005
 | The Innocent Harlan Coben Date: 2005-07-02 11:53:18 — $17.79 — Book Rating: |
Breaking from my norm of sci-fi/fantasy reading, I'd been eagerly awaiting to get my teeth into the latest suspense thriller from Harlan Coben. I'm not sure why, but he's the only suspence/thriller author I read, I remember I was at a loose end reading wise (not due to a lack of available books, just a lack of immediate interest in anything on the shelf) and picked up the back of Tell No One - for an experiment in literature I took it home and devoured it till the sun rose. It's been that way with each Coben book I read...
Anyway, what can I actually say about "The Innocent" that won't mimick what I'd say about any of his other books? This is not a tale with great characters and a hollow pointless story, nor is it a plot driven masterpiece with forgettable characters; but a novel with a characters that are both likable, detestable, mundanely boring in their suburan realism, all neatly thrown into a compelling story line that twists, turns, backtracks, and throws itself in your face without stopping.
Ok so sure, thats pretty standard formula for a suspence/thriller novel right? Does that matter thou? Not at all. My only beef with these novels (and more so TV shows) is the media of computers and technology; the ability to blow up any image to any size and have its contents crystal clear for all your important evidence gathering needs. Harlan did this, but he did it better than most...
The software in question is noted as being at best - guess work. The important evidence gather was not, as some shows have you - reflected in the cornea of a guy whose face was in turn, reflected in his cars wing mirror. No - Harlan has your evidence in acceptable abstacts: washed out sunlight in one window and grey misty rain splotches in another.
Another accurate, but somewhat out of place was the existence of browser cookies playing a part in the plot. It's not that it was wrong, the use and logic behind the scene was logical and in my mind accurate, but the problem was that neither of the characters involved came accross as being computer literate enough to know what cookies were, or why you might want to leave them behind when hiding your browser usage.
The character in question was trying to hide information, her INBOX, OUTBOX, and TRASH mailboxes cleared out, the browser cached cleaned, browser history wiped out, temporay files cleaned out - everything except the cookies - why? Simple - by clearing the cookies, saved login information for OTHER USERS of the machine would be gone, they wouldn't be logged in automatically to their favorite forums, which in turn would highlight the fact someone had been removing things.
Still, "The Innocent" is yet another darn fine book by a master of his genre, and once again I'm left eagerly awaiting a new release...
Anyway, what can I actually say about "The Innocent" that won't mimick what I'd say about any of his other books? This is not a tale with great characters and a hollow pointless story, nor is it a plot driven masterpiece with forgettable characters; but a novel with a characters that are both likable, detestable, mundanely boring in their suburan realism, all neatly thrown into a compelling story line that twists, turns, backtracks, and throws itself in your face without stopping.
Ok so sure, thats pretty standard formula for a suspence/thriller novel right? Does that matter thou? Not at all. My only beef with these novels (and more so TV shows) is the media of computers and technology; the ability to blow up any image to any size and have its contents crystal clear for all your important evidence gathering needs. Harlan did this, but he did it better than most...
The software in question is noted as being at best - guess work. The important evidence gather was not, as some shows have you - reflected in the cornea of a guy whose face was in turn, reflected in his cars wing mirror. No - Harlan has your evidence in acceptable abstacts: washed out sunlight in one window and grey misty rain splotches in another.
Another accurate, but somewhat out of place was the existence of browser cookies playing a part in the plot. It's not that it was wrong, the use and logic behind the scene was logical and in my mind accurate, but the problem was that neither of the characters involved came accross as being computer literate enough to know what cookies were, or why you might want to leave them behind when hiding your browser usage.
The character in question was trying to hide information, her INBOX, OUTBOX, and TRASH mailboxes cleared out, the browser cached cleaned, browser history wiped out, temporay files cleaned out - everything except the cookies - why? Simple - by clearing the cookies, saved login information for OTHER USERS of the machine would be gone, they wouldn't be logged in automatically to their favorite forums, which in turn would highlight the fact someone had been removing things.
Still, "The Innocent" is yet another darn fine book by a master of his genre, and once again I'm left eagerly awaiting a new release...
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