by Harlan Coben
First published 2011
Wendy Tynes has built her television career exposing sexual predators through elaborate sting operations. She believes in her mission until social worker Dan Mercer walks into one of her traps. What starts as another routine takedown quickly spirals beyond her control. Dan connects to the vanishing of a teenage girl from New Jersey, but the links prove far more tangled than Wendy anticipated. As she digs deeper, the boundaries between victim and perpetrator blur. The people she trusted reveal hidden motives. Her professional judgment crumbles under the weight of new evidence. Wendy must navigate a web of deception where nothing appears as it first seemed. The investigation forces her to examine her own assumptions about justice and redemption. She confronts uncomfortable truths about guilt and loss while questioning whether forgiveness remains possible when the stakes turn deadly.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New Jersey
454 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Dutton
Content warnings: violence