Shelter
ISBN: 9781409135364
Description
When tragic events tear him away from his parents, 15-year-old Mickey Bolitar is sent to live with his estranged uncle, Myron. For a while, it seems his train wreck of a life is finally improving - until his girlfriend, Ashley, goes missing without a trace.
Unwilling to let another person he cares about walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld, revealing a conspiracy so shocking it will leave him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
Reviewed on 29th December 2015
In the final Myron Bolitar novel, Harlan Coben introduced his star character's nephew Mickey, and in Shelter this new teenage character takes centre stage in his own adventure when his girlfriend disappears.
It's clearly an experiment in writing for a young adult audience, but that's something that Coben pulls off really well, migrating his trademark mix of thriller and violence and soap opera into something suitable for the target demographic without watering things down to the level of parody (as John Grisham did when he wrote his young adult novels).
The story doesn't shy away from violence or from other adult themes such as drugs, and makes for interesting reading for an adult too. The characters are interesting and varied - a mix of social outcasts with differing talents and interests who come alive on the page rather than attempt to just be a vehicle to get the reader into the story.
