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    Play Dead
    Play Dead
    Play Dead
    Ebook381 pages7 hours

    Play Dead

    By Meryl Sawyer

    3/5

    ()

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    About this ebook




    How do you stop a killer when everyone thinks you're dead?

    When Newport Beach heiress Hayley Fordham heads to Costa Rica on an art commission, she has no idea she's narrowly escaped an assassin's car bomb. But before the paint's even dry on her mural, her stepsiblings have arranged her funeral and redivided the family trust. The fact that Hayley is still very much alive remains a secret to everyone but FBI investigator Ryan Hollister, who intercepts the \victim\" returning home in the flesh.

    Ryan has zero tolerance for the pampered elite. But there's something about the complex Hayley that sets his blood racing. With evidence pointing to a Fordham family associate, Ryan needs her cooperation––and her closeness––more than he dares admit. Because now, especially now, he's prepared to risk anything to stop Hayley from being killed...again.

    "
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781488739040
    Play Dead
    Author

    Meryl Sawyer

    Meryl grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the only child of a single mother. She gives her mother credit for her love of books and encouraging her to write. When Meryl was in the third grade her birthday gift was an ancient Underwood with the E key missing. That didn't stop Meryl! She wrote stories and went back and put in the E with a pencil. She's been writing ever since - first on a typewriter, then a word processor, then a computer. When Meryl finally decided to get serious about writing - by serious she meant wanting to see her work in print - Meryl attended the Writers Program at UCLA. She had graduated from UCLA years earlier but this time she returned to study writing. There Meryl was fortunate to meet Colleen McCullough, author of Thornbirds. She was on tour and one of Meryl's instructors threw a cocktail party to introduce Colleen to some aspiring writers. Colleen was unbelievably warm and charming and helpful. "Write what you like to read," she told the students. Meryl had always wanted to be a female Sidney Sheldon - so that's the direction she took. Meryl completed a novel, attended seminars, met an agent and had offers from four different publishers within two months of finishing the book. That's not every author's experience, but it happened that way for Meryl. She jokingly says, "I thought I would be famous by Friday - Saturday at the very latest. Here I am eighteen years later. Not famous but successful, and more importantly, happy." One thing all Meryl's books have in common is animals. Her canine buddies have even helped Meryl's career. They have spent countless hours under her desk while she was writing. Meryl loves to hear from readers. She may be reached on the web at www.merylsawyer.com.

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    Reviews for Play Dead

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      Ex fashion model and successful business woman Laura Ayers' perfect world is shattered at a time which should have been the happiest of her life. On her honeymoon, her sports superstar husband goes for a swim - and never returns. (Desc. Amazon.com)This was Coben's first book, newly reprinted. It was a signature Coben thriller, but not up to the quality of his current writing. Still, it's worth reading; there's plenty of suspense and bloodshed right up to the last page.
    • 1/5
      Dreadful. His first novel and it really shows. But also fascinating to see his development as a writer. The dialogue is appalling, which is so interesting because in his later novels his dialogue is terrific. All in all a great read to see how a writer grows.
    • 5/5
      Okay, so the twists were extremely obvious in certain parts, but the end revealed and unexpected revelation...a honeymoon ruined, the groom presumed dead...deadly secrets from the past unravel...is there such a thing as happily ever after?

    • 3/5
      Seemed very long and drawn out --- I was listening to the audio version and I almost quit but there was just enough to make me wonder how things were going to work out, so I went to the end....a little too much of lots of things. With a quick HOWEVER, this was his first book and yes, having read one of his more recent ones not long ago, he definitely improved although on the audio he claimed that he still loved this story.
    • 3/5
      Basketball player David Baskin fakes his own death. 7 out of 10. Written from a man's point of view sometimes.
    • 4/5
      This is another one of Harlan Coben's collection of books written at a time when he could not get a publisher to publish his work. Now that he is an acclaimed author, he is publishing these early works. I did enjoy reading this book, however, unlike some of his other works, this one was a little bit predictable, and the title of the book also gave away too much.
    • 2/5
      Recommended & given to me by my dentist, who said this was Coben's first book & not bad. Coben is a favorite of his. I hope the books got better. The foreshadowing was so bad that I had everything pretty much figured out in the first 50 or so pages. I made it up to about 100 & then started reading a paragraph every 50 pages or so to see if I was missing anything. Nope. It took him over 500 pages to tell the story & I just wasn't that interested in it. While all the characters were believable, I didn't feel connected to any of them. The heroine was OK, but I never really cared enough for her to keep reading. The writing wasn't bad, either. I guess it really wasn't my type of book & with it being so obvious, I just couldn't work up the energy to really read it.
    • 3/5
      I think the other reviewers have it all wrong. Yes, it's not the greatest book. Yes, you can tell it's written by an inexperienced writer. But reading Coben's first book after others of his only makes you appreciate what an amazing writer he is now. What a great way to show his growth as a writer. And I think that's what he was trying to do by reissuing this book. He talks in the introduction about how in the reissue he doesn't rewrite anything and how he wanted to present it as is. For which I applaud him.

      It's a long book and there are times I just yelled out in frustration at the language and superfluous use of words. But in the end I am appreciating it for what it is. Harlan Coben's first novel.
    • 5/5
      Awesome! I started to read in hospital and could not put it down even though I was in pain after surgery. This is a real page turner.Coben really had fun with the characters making u guess who was the murderer. I won't be giving anything away, but it was a thriller from start to finish!!!
    • 3/5
      Not as good as the last one I have read of his, but enjoyable. As it was his first book, it wasn't bad. Predictable and slightly unbeleivable.
    • 3/5
      Considering this novel was his first and written over 20 years ago, it's not bad. It has all the earmarks of a Coben plot, with many twists along the way. But he has so greatly inproved in his writing technique, character and plot development. Now when I pick up one of his books, by the last page, my head is hurting from all the plot twists that you never could figure out until the last page. Here, I saw them coming and had everything worked out before the last page. However, I did enjoy the book, it was still a page turner, and it was interesting to read his first effort, but I am grateful that Coben has grown as an author. Hey, everyone has to start somewhere.
    • 4/5
      Harlan Coben's first book, PLAY DEAD, had been out of print. It's reissued in paperback now.A gorgeous model marries a Boston Celtics basketball player who disappears and is supposedly found dead. But something's going on that's fishy-fishy.And so the reader is taken for a ride as everyone seems suspect of something. And another basketball player shows up whose moves on the court are mighty suspect.Coben prefaces this book with a plea for readers who haven't read his other, later books: please don't read this one first, he says,So I was all set to dislike PLAY DEAD. But I didn't.I looked for something to be wrong, and here were my problems with it:The awful brotherThe endIf you like Coben's books, you will this one, too. Don't be put off by his preface.
    • 4/5
      This book comes with a chummy introduction by the author much like the ones you sometimes get in Stephen King novels, warning the reader that this is an early book and not up to the same standards as his most recent stuff. This had the effect of reducing my expectations to near zero, but having finished it I'd have to say this is as good as anything else I've read by him, and in some cases, better. It has an airier feel - more breathing space, fewer wisecracks (though I don't always dislike those).If I'm going to find fault, it's going to be with the whodunnit element - there weren't enough characters to make it a challenge. I did guess the 'why' as well as the 'who' and i don't manage that very often. And why why why do all the female characters have to have perfect bodies? The fact that they all have to be candidates for Mensa as well doesn't make it right.But the book had me gripped from page one, even after I had guessed at the secrets. It keeps events coming thick and fast, and ultimately it goes the way the reader wants it to.
    • 3/5
      enjoyed this, the writing was simple and probably predictble but still worth a red
    • 2/5
      Although this was just released (without revisions) in 2010, you can tell it is an early work by Coben. Reads like a soap opera and you could see the ending coming a mile away. I skipped parts just to get through it. So glad his writing has improved.
    • 5/5
      WOW! I think that's a good word for this book. This is a book that Harlan Coben wrote but never published - I'm not sure what made him to decide to publish it now but I'm glad he did. It was really good. I must say that I thought some of it was a little far fetched but Harlan does a very good job at stringing you along with no clear answers for a long time leaving you guessing the whole time. Definite recommend for anyone who likes a good mystery/suspense.
    • 2/5
      Disappointing but I stuck with it because I hate to give up on a book! Two dimensional characters implausible plot and a twist at the end which was unpredictable only because it was totally unbelievable.
    • 3/5
      Honestly? I usually enjoy Harlen's books but this one felt to me like it was written by Danielle Steel. Not up to his usual fiction. Disappointing.
    • 1/5
      I would disagree with Adpaton's review only in so far as I did think that this book was, at various points laugh-out-loud awful. It is impossible to exaggerate just how dire the writing is. It could very well be used for a "how not to do it" writer's workshop. Approached from that perspective, the book can actually be quite rewarding. (Surely, surely, he won't digress from the action for yet another pointless flashback that adds nothing to the story....oh yes he will.....)I bought the book very cheaply on the Kindle bookstore so the only positive point I can cite is that at least I haven't been responsible for setting loose another physical copy of this book in the wild (it certainly wouldn't have been staying on my bookshelf!).
    • 4/5
      My reading of the Coben library is complete now that I have completed his first published novel. And I have to extend a large thank you to whomever had the brilliance to republish this book as I've been on the hunt for it for at least a year to no avail. Coben is a master at thrillers and plot twists and it's only gotten better over the years. The only hang up I had on this book was that no one would figure out Baskin's secret, but it was a page-turner to the very end.
    • 3/5
      Once upon a time I was marooned in hospital with nothing to read and, desperate, I accepted the loan of Danielle Steele's 'The Promise'. What a book! It was written in 1978 and very likely was a major influence on Harlan Coben back in the days before he became Harlan Coben because nothing else can explain 'Play Dead'. Written in 1989, this is a seriously bad book and once again I am shocked by the publisher's greed in trying to make even more money out of a successful writer by publishing his juvenalia; I am also surprised that Harlan Coben allowed it - although, to do him justice, he does state in a preface that this is not a book of which he is particuarly proud and advises novice Coben readers to cut their teeth on something else. Coben is one of my favourite writers but had this been the first of his books I read, it would also have been my last because it really is pretty dire. Not laugh-out-loud 'Gosh this book is hilariously badly-written' dire, just average dire - but dire none the less. Unrecognisably dire. Enough with the dire: there's this incredibly beautiful sexy supermodel with her own clothing line, Laura Ayers, who secretly marries this incredibly talented, handsome basketball player David Baskin, and they go on a romantic honeymoon on the Australian Gold Coast. Sun, sea and sex - lots of it, because these two incredibly yada yada people just can't get enough of each other's incredibly hot bodies. And in case we forget, Coban keeps reminding us of their incredible hotness.But then oh dear, hubbie David disapears, goes for a swim one night and despite being an incredibly strong and experienced swimmer he disappears: a battered corpse emerges from the briney depths a few days later and is identified by his best friend, a policeman, who has flown over from the States. Laura is incredibly gutted, natch, and almost falls apart - but her sister and her best friend are there to help her pull herself together so she is well enough to attend a tribute to David at his old basketball grounds. She watches a match played by his old team and sees he has been replaced by this incredibly handsome buff new player whose moves are so similar to those of her late husband as to be almost identical. Really, it's just incredible. Laura is strangely drawn to the stranger...In Danielle Steele's book, the heroine is persuaded to abandon her fiance for his own good, and undergoes intensive plastic surgery that transforms her into a completely different and even more beautiful woman. Despite her best intentions however, she meets up with her ex [who has been told she is dead] and he is strangely drawn to her...In Play Dead, one of the characters undergoes extensive plastic surgery and has a secret to hide. I'm not saying who because that would spoil the book for you so I'll just mention that he flew back to the States from Australia and David's best friend the policeman is helping him start a new life. However, as far as I can recall, no one in The Promise is so deadset on keeping the lovers apart that they are prepared to committ murder while in Coben's book the corpse rate mounts up. There's a secret in the past which must be protected at all costs: we are given hints of it throughout and the whole thing is predictable, very unlikely and totally preposterous. None of those three factors is out of place in a well-written novel, twists and turns, red herrings and shocks all add to the fun: but this is not a well-written novel and, to me at least, contains no glimmer of the brilliance which now marks Coban's work. Quite incredible.
    • 2/5
      This was Harlan Coben’s first published novel, and he freely admits in the introduction that it’s not particularly good. And he’s right! The plot is outlandish and overly complicated, but beneath that and the sometimes cliched writing, you can see the beginnings of what Coben will become.I wish I could discuss the plot without spoiling it, but I’m really not sure how. Basically, there is a step taken that is really extreme and seems pretty unnecessary. Beyond that is a lot of family drama. Coben does a good job of giving us multiple points of view, including the killer’s, and he manages to give us the killer’s point of view without spoiling who it is. That’s not easy to do!So overall, much like Coben himself, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read Coben before. In fact, I’m not sure I would recommend it even to a Coben fan. But if you’re a completist, it’s really not that painful to read.
    • 2/5
      Synopsis/blurb......Ex fashion model and successful business woman Laura Ayars' perfect world is shattered at a time which should have been the happiest of her life. On her honeymoon, her sports superstar husband goes for a swim - and never returns. But what has happened to David - can he really be dead? Whilst struggling to cope with her almost overwhelming grief, Laura is plagued by questions and doubts. Was it an accident? Or suicide? Or is it some terrible, ill-judged hoax? As events begin to unfold, Laura starts to question David's mysterious disappearance. She begins to uncover a conspiracy which reaches deep into the past, and is now slowly beginning to destroy everyone involved. Someone will do anything to keep Laura away from the awful truth - and she has no idea who she can trust . . .I?ve read a few of Coben?s books in the last 6 or 7 months. My wife enjoys his stories and if she reads something I usually follow on a few months later. This was a reprint of Coben?s first book published back around 1990. He does write a forward in which he gently attempts to steer people away from this and in the direction of another of his books first. About halfway through reading this I could sort of guess why......if I had picked this as my first Coben read, I probably wouldn?t come back to him at all.Perfect Laura was an imperfect physical specimen of a child, but having overcome those awkward school years with the help of her sister who sort of looked more perfect than her at this stage, she blossomed through puberty into.....how to say it......a perfect physical specimen who became the world?s greatest superstar fashion model, aided by her perfect feet, perfect legs, perfect butt, perfect hips, perfect waist, perfect breasts, perfect neck, perfect mouth, perfect lips, perfect nose, perfect eyes, perfect ears and beautiful hair.....which was always styled to perfection. I think her perfect posture may have also helped. After retiring from modelling, she decided to become a successful businesswoman. Everyone laughed, everyone mocked, everyone scorned her, but do you know what? She was absolutely perfect at it. Fast forward a bit, she meets David. He?s a world class mega-smega-superstar basketball player, whose pretty perfect.....perfect looks, perfect bank account, and where does he find the time to do all that charity work for the children? They fall in love, they marry.........at this stage I wanted them to quickly pop out a child, because I was kind of curious to see if it would be ....perfect.....but I?m digressing.......The wheels fall off, Laura?s family has secrets, you know dark ones that will come back to haunt you. David disappears, and I was thinking.....wait - perhaps it has something to do with dark secrets from Laura?s past. Without giving too much away, Laura?s world goes all imperfect for a fair few hundred pages or so, and she doesn?t know who to trust, apart from Australian Graham.Still I needn?t have worried as we were safe in Harlan?s hands.Unbelievable plot, unbelievable characters, unbelievable reactions from unbelievable characters to unbelievable situations. If he could have addressed those minor flaws, it would have been perfect.2 from 5, on the basis that I didn?t quite reach the point where I wanted to commit hari-kari with my bookmark whilst reading.My copy was bought last year probably second hand, can?t remember to be truthful. PS, I will no doubt read him again and I'll look forward to it. Generally I've enjoyed his books in the past, this was a stinker though.
    • 3/5
      Play Dead. Harlan Coben. 1990. Janet insisted that I had not read all of Coben’s books and she was right. This is his very first novel and his favorite according to Coben. A star professional basketball player and his former model/fashion designer girl friend off to Australia to marry. Laura goes to a business meeting and returns to the hotel to find David missing. David apparently drowned, and Laura returns to Boston. Odd things start to happen and Laura begins to think David was murdered. As always Coben leaves you hanging at the end of each chapter. We switch between Laura, her parents, David’s best friend, her sister, and David’s brother. The book is a little long, but a pleasant non-exacting novel to read.
    • 1/5
      Having selected this novel from a pile of offerings by this author, I wish I had bothered to read the introduction before checking it out of the library. It begins like this:“Okay, if this is the first book of mine you’re going to try, stop now. Return it. Grab another. It’s okay. I’ll wait.”Coben goes on to explain that he wrote the book 20 years ago and has not edited it since. He states that it is flawed and implies that it is rather poorly written, but reassures the reader that he still loves this book. I hadn’t read anything by him before so I thought that I’d still give this a whirl. Frankly, I wish I’d listened to his advice.The premiseA ridiculously gorgeous and rich model turned supremely successful business woman secretly marries a stupidly handsome and rich pro athlete at the top of his career. While on their secret honeymoon, David disappears and it soon transpires that he has drowned. Or has he? Driven by her grief, Laura is compelled to discover exactly what happened to her new husband, even if it means drawing a killer’s attention to her.My thoughtsThe prologue gave an immediate flavour of the writing style: clichéd and overly dramatic. Set 29 years earlier than the main storyline, it clearly directed my attention to the past as an important element of the plot. Stylistically, it reminded me of the opening sequence of a horror movie (or even a Point Horror story!) as an unidentified woman argues with a man who is then murdered by an unseen hand. It succeeded in inducing some curiosity from me but was very poorly written, as was the whole book.The opening chapter launched me into the world of the rich and famous. Personally, this alienated me a little from the start as I would rather read about ‘real’ people. A top model and a pro athlete just makes it all seem a bit Jackie Collins - especially as the first scene opens on the special couple’s honeymoon with them joking about how worn out they are. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!) Oh - and the ex model, who retired at 23, was Businesswoman of the Year. The characters reminded me of a high school novel that focused on the homecoming queen and top jock. Obviously, there are real people who are incredibly talented, but this just felt very one dimensional and I found it difficult to care about these characters.I quickly found the focus on physical beauty and admiration rather tedious, (yes, they’re gorgeous, I understand that, now please stop writing about their glistening skin,) and the clunking sexual puns could be spotted several lines ahead of their wince-inducing dénouement. Early on, David actually uses the cliché 'you've made me the happiest man in the world' followed by 'I couldn't live without you’. I felt like I was reading a Mills and Boon offering. This insistence on physical beauty continues throughout. Take the following example:“When Laura and [close friend] Serita entered the Heritage of Boston Bank together, everyone stopped. Typewriters halted their clacking. Heads turned. Eyes stared. Mouths dropped. Men gawked. Walking alone, Laura and Serita could make a man’s eyes water; looking at them both at the same time could cause a cerebral accident.”It makes me wonder how they made it to the bank without causing traffic accidents. This actually isn’t the whole description, but you get the idea. This is very bad chicklit pretending to be good crime fiction.From the opening it is clear that David’s disappearance is more complicated than the tragic shark death (yes, really) his policeman friend sadly reveals to the grieving widow. Switches in third person perspective make it clear that Laura is right to be suspicious: everyone around her seems to have secrets related to her husband’s disappearance. Why is some of David’s money missing? Who is the new mystery player who has taken David’s spot on the team? And why was Laura’s mother so firmly against her relationship with David?The trouble is, although there are a lot of questions, the answers are disconcertingly obvious to the reader (at least, they were to me, and I deliberately read crime fiction with my brain switched off) and despite Coben’s best efforts at introducing twists and turns into the plot, from about a fifth of the way through I had most of the answers. Furthermore, a fifth of the way through was 100 pages; this book needed a better editor as it would have felt a lot more tightly paced if it was a good 100-150 pages shorter.The characters are firmly one dimensional, which is how Coben justifies his ludicrous conclusion. David is motivated purely by his love of Laura; Laura is driven by her love of David; and everyone else is determined to keep secrets from the past locked away. Motivations are incredibly simplistic and do not feel sufficient, even if you assume that several of the characters are insane. The most interesting character and exception to the rule is Stan, David’s brother and a weasel who tries to better himself. His slips back into being an evil idiot are perhaps inevitable but I found he added some interest to an otherwise bland cast. That said…his romantic and moral path was ultimately rather predictable.Final thoughtsPredictable plotting and one dimensional characterisation do not have to equal a bad novel, but I would struggle to identify a redeeming feature in this instance. The writing style is poor: clunky, clichéd and lacking variety in sentence structure. The book is too long and feels over written. I would probably still try a later Coben work as reviews I have read online suggest that this is not typical of his oeuvre, but I was disappointed with this and won’t be rushing to read another. If you’ve never read anything by him and would like to try, I’d follow his advice: don’t start with this one.
    • 1/5
      This book was so deadly awful that I’m not even going to grace it with a synopsis except for this: an unbelievably gorgeous ex-model and current fashion mogul gets married to an unbelievably handsome and talented basketball star. They have to elope because her mother inexplicably hates the guy. While on the honeymoon, she has to go to some business meeting (at his insistence of course) and while she’s gone he mysteriously drowns. His best friend TC flies from Boston and identifies the body. Now the wonder woman must get to the bottom of this. She is tipped off that something weird is going on because $500K disappears from one of his accounts (now hers after like 2 days of marriage).Of course he’s not really dead. A mysterious newcomer who spectacularly makes the Celtics new starting line up has a ‘fade away dunk’ like the dead guy’s. and now they’re calling him White Lightning II. Oh puleeze.Turns out that he disappeared because the model’s mother went to Australia (where they were secretly eloping) and told him that he couldn’t stay married to her daughter because he is her brother. She had an affair with his father years ago and the model (who used to be a fat ugly girl but is so spectacular now that the author had to keep reminding us of her fabulous body and mind-numbingly beautiful face over and over and over and over) is the result of the affair.In another completely unbelievable twist, the mother of the model is wrong about the paternity of her child even though she hadn’t been sleeping with her husband for 2 months before conception. You see, the husband found out she was pregnant with another man’s child, killed the father and then drugged the mother so he could abort the child. The mother thought she was just having morning sickness (I guess the author also expected us to think she ignored the weeks of bleeding afterwards too, thinking that’s what a normal pregnancy was like!) then the mother’s plan to seduce the father over and over so he would think the kid was his.The writing of this book was idiotic to the point of hilarity. I mean it was awful. One of the worst things I have ever come across. If I still had the wretched thing here I could open it to any page and copy and example. If I hadn’t read the other Coben book first, I certainly never would have. I probably won’t read another because basically the two I read were exact duplicates in terms of story. The characters were terrible and about as deep as a cat box.

    Book preview

    Play Dead - Meryl Sawyer

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