cover image Fool Me Once

Fool Me Once

Harlan Coben, read by January LaVoy. Brilliance Audio, , unabridged, 8 CDs, 10 hrs., $39.99 ISBN 978-1-5012-1758-6

In his new thriller, a seemingly unsolvable puzzle isn’t so unsolvable. Two weeks after witnessing her husband, Joe, murdered in Central Park, retired special-ops Army Captain Maya Stern consults her newly installed nanny cam and sees Joe enter their living room with their two-year-old daughter. Is it possible Joe survived? Is she losing her mind? Is someone trying to fool her? (The title gives that last one away.) The question becomes, who’s trying to fool her, and why? Reader LaVoy does a masterly job of ginning up genuine suspense and adding much-needed heft to characters so gossamer they threaten to blow off the page. The author did make his protagonist, Maya, fully dimensional, but it’s LaVoy’s impassioned enactment of her trials and tribulations that makes the listener care what happens to her. A Dutton hardcover. (Mar.)