Live Wire Harlan Coben 2011

More clever banter among Myron Bolitar, Winthrop Horne Lockwood III, Big Cyndi and between them and various bad guysin this umpteenth book in the Bolitar series by Coben.  He appears to have gotten a bit lazy, the main danger for all writers who feel compelled to issue a book-a-year for their particular hero.  Sue Grafton suffered this as she and Kinsey Millhone neared the end of the alphabet and Coben appears to have a serious case of it in this volume as well.  The parallel stories of Myron’s father’s life threatening heart attack which bookend the real story of celebrity adulation, drug dependence, and murder seems unnecessary and the characters other than our favorite principles at MB Reps seem even more uni-dimensional than usual.  There is some fun dialogue, some violence, and some sex, but not enough to make me go searching for any Bolitar books I may have missed along the way. Time for more sophisticated mysteries ala Simenon, French, Penny, et al.