Entertaining but not spectacular follow-up to his debut novel Anonymous Rex. It takes place before the events in the first book, so we get to see Vincent Rubio and Ernie Watson working a case together. A case involving a suspicious cult called the “Progressives,” which encourages dinosaurs to embrace their primitive side, throw off millennia of human oppression, and return to their ancestral roots. (Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, the Rex series is set in a world where dinosaurs still exist, but wear human suits to make the monkeys think they’re still extinct. It’s a science fiction/detective crossover, or “Dino Noir” as the cover blurb puts it.) Ernie’s ex-wife’s brother has been absorbed by the cult. Ernie and Vincent extract him and get him deprogrammed, only to find him dead a few days later. There was a suicide note, but did he really kill himself?

The story is interesting, and provides another glimpse into dinosaur life, but it lacks the sparkle of surprise that Anonymous Rex had. Although at first glance the dinosaur world plays a bigger role in this book than in the first one, the story plays out much more like a simple detective story with funny masks. While riffing on the (flashy, cinematic) superficial differences between the species, Garcia has neglected the more subtle aspects that Anonymous Rex played to: the furtive need for secrecy, the ingrained mores and taboos of such a parallel society, and the cognitive dissonance of knowing that dinosaurs still walk the earth…in business suits.

The fourth Myron Bolitar novel is set in and around Merion golf club at a US Open. Jack Coldren is in the lead. Myron is there to woo potential clients, but he gets drawn in by the Coldren family when Chad, Jack’s son, is kidnapped. Unfortunately Myron has to investigate on his own because Win doesn’t refuses to get involved. The reason for this is something that Myron will have to uncover if he is to rescue Chad, and find out who abducted him. Not quite up to the high standards of the first three books (it feels unbalanced, with the ending being much heavier than the light, jokey beginning), but still a top slice of detective entertainment.

An old-fashioned whodunnit murder mystery set in the high-pressure world of a budget airline. Althought it is ostensibly a “John Putnam Thatcher mystery”, Thatcher only plays a very small part in the book. In fact, the only reason I can see for him being present is to put his name in the blurb. His presence doesn’t further the plot in any way. Although he and his cronies do eventually figure out who committed the crime, they show up at the denouement just after the killer has made a confession. The rest of the story follows the various suspects while they spin off their own theories and try to backstab each other (politically) in a struggle for control of the airline. Unfortunately neither the characters nor the battle for power are terribly interesting.

Ten years ago, just as he was about to turn pro, Myron Bolitar’s knee was wrecked in an accident on the basketball court. Despite extensive therapy, he never recovered enough to play at that level again. But now Clip Arnstein, owner of the championship-winning New Jersey Dragons, wants Myron to join the team. The real reson he want to sign Myron is not because he wants him to play, but because Greg Downing, one of the Dragons’ star players, has gone missing and he wants Myron to find him. Ten years ago, Greg and Myron were personal and professional arch rivals, and Arnstein hopes that being on the team will give Myron a better opportunity to track Greg down.

In the first two Myron Bolitar novels, Deal Breaker and Drop Shot, Coben only played about with Myron’s injury. We found out how it had changed the course of his life, turning him towards law school and a career as a sports agent. But it was mostly background colour, illustrating Myron’s history in sports, rather than pivotal plot information. In Fade Away, Myron confronts anew all of the issues he thought he had buried ten years ago. As the the missing person mystery progresses, he and his friends have to deal with the emotional turmoil that arises from the glimmer of hope that he might be able to play again. And eventually, they come to realize that the two halves of the story are more deeply and painfully connected than any of them had suspected.

In Drop Shot, Myron Bolitar’s superstar tennis client, Duane Richwood, is playing in the early rounds of the US Open when Valerie Simpson, a former child tennis star, is shot dead. Valerie had approached Myron about being her agent while she staged her comeback. When the police start questioning Duane about his involvement, Myron digs deeper into the case, and soon finds out that all the threads lead back to the murder of a US Senator’s son six years earlier. A murder that no-one wants to see investigated again… Another cracking mystery from Harlan Coben.

Myron Bolitar: former pro-basketball star, lawyer and sports agent, with a history that also involves a certain amount of work for the FBI. How can you not love a character like that? Add in his friend and business partner, Windsor Horne Lockwood III, part East-Coast American upper-class snob, part martial arts genius with a brutal sociopathic streak, and you have a detective pairing that’s right up there with Spenser and Hawk, and Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Throw in a story about young football star whose missing (presumed dead) ex-fiancée shows up in the back of a porn magazine, and you get a delicious mystery covering corruption, blackmail, and murder. Coben’s writing is both humorous and sympathetic. He weaves a satisfyingly twisty plot, and resolves it neatly at the end. This is the first book of his I’ve read, and I’m eagerly looking forward to many more.