2025 BLOCKBUSTERS: NOBODY’S FOOL By HARLAN COBEN and THE SUMMER GUESTS By TESS GERRITSEN
March 2025 is shaping up as being a very good month for international crime fiction and thrillers, with two of the best coming towards the end of the month in the form of new releases by bestselling maestros Harlan Coben and Tess Gerritsen.
A new Harlan Coben novel is always a cause for celebration, especially when it is as good as Nobody’s Fool, (Century, 27 March 2025).
Nobody’s Fool features Detective Sami Kierce who we last saw in Fool Me Once (2016). Kierce only had a relatively minor role in Fool Me Once, although it was enhanced and expanded in the Netflix adaption which screened in early 2024. Adeel Akhtar played the part of Kierce in the Netflix adaption and gave the character more depth than he had in the book. Apparently watching Akhtar’s performance, and the extra scenes written for the character, inspired Coben to go back and revisit the character, and give Kierce his own book. The result is Nobody’s Fool.
A year after the devastating events that took place in Fool Me Once, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce’s college days comes back to haunt him. Present day may be hard enough for Kierce, but his past isn’t through with him yet.
When he was a young college grad backpacking his way through Spain, Kierce encountered a beautiful young woman called Anna. It was a magical time for Kierce until the morning he woke up to find himself covered in blood with a knife in his hand and the body of his new girlfriend beside him. Terrified, Kierce fled the scene.
Twenty two years later, and Kierce is now a private investigator and a new father who is trying to work off his debts by teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. But as soon as he makes eye contact with her, she bolts.
For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day. Unfortunately it also leads him into a tragic new mystery and murder.
Nobody’s Fool is Coben in very good form. Very authors can match his ability for concocting wild, twisty plots that captivate from the beginning, and Nobody’s Fool certainly delivers all the surprises that we have come to expect. With considerable skill, Coben unfolds his story at a breathless pace and keeps the reader guessing as the story veers down some unexpected paths. The characters have a credible feel to them, and while some of the plot twists strain belief most readers will be too busy turning the pages to notice or care.
The connection between the various cases in the past and the present requires some careful attention, but Coben is good at keeping the reader across the different strands. The writing is smooth and engaging, and woven into the story are subtle themes around wealth and privilege and the consequences of past actions. There is also a good sense of moral ambiguity.
I was fortunate enough to hear Coben speak at the Bouchercon conference in Nashville last year, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that a small scene in Nobody’s Fool is set in the enormous, outlandish resort, the “world’s largest terrarium”, where the conference took place.
In all, Nobody’s Fool is a terrific read and probably one of the best books that Coben has done in recent years.
Nobody’s Fool is released in Australia and the United States on 25 March 2025 and in the United Kingdom on 27 March 2025.
I thoroughly enjoyed Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast from late 2023. Set in a small coastal town in Maine, it revolved around bunch of retired spies who had settled down for a quiet, anonymous life, but found their peace disturbed by a ghost from their past. It was a bit like The Thursday Murder Club, but with more brio and bloodshed.
Now Tess has followed it up with The Summer Guests, (Bantam, 25 March 2025).
Maggie Bird is the unofficial head of the Martini Club, a group of old former spies who fill in their time by sipping cocktails and pretending to be a book club. When a teenage girl disappears and Maggie’s neighbour becomes the prime suspect, she decides to put down her martini glass and join the investigation to prove her friend’s innocence. The girl’s wealthy family are pushing for an arrest, but things become complicated when authorities also discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond. As the young police chief Jo Thibodeau grapples with two unexplained mysteries, which seemed to be connected to a past scandal, the Martini Club race to uncover the truth behind the shadowy secrets.
Tess is a veteran of the thriller scene and The Summer Guests opens with a professional, easy flowing style that draws you in and keeps you engaged as the pace increases and the surprises start to tumble out. What seems like a simple disappearance soon escalates into something else, as old secrets are uncovered and new dangers emerge.
The characters are simply, but effectively, limned and the rhythm of life in the small town is quickly captured. Tess is good at describing the tension between the year-round inhabitants and the annual summer residents, and the book builds to a suspenseful conclusion.
The plot probably does not have the drive of The Spy Coast, but it is still very engaging and the twists and turns are certainly entertaining. The story darts down some dark and unexpected holes, and the ending delivers good thrills. A highly polished piece of entertainment that will keep you happily turning the pages from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
The book version also contains a joint short story between Tess and Lee Child, in which Maggie and Reacher join together in an interesting case.
The Summer Guests is published in Australia and the United Kingdom on 25 March 2025 and in the United States on 18 March 2025. Thanks to the Canberra Weekly and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book for review.
So two very well crafted and engrossing thrillers. It is also interesting to note, based on the Australian and UK covers, that orange and silhouettes are apparently the hot elements for successful cover design in 2025!