I read about all the hit Netflix shows based on Coben’s books so I bit.

If the people in my real life were as one dimensional and clichéd as the characters in this book, I’d probably end up on the news with blood dripping off my fingers.

How do you make a raised-by-wolves boy utterly uninteresting? All right, he wasn’t raised by wolves. He was found in the woods as a child and he has a vague memory of trauma. Thus ends that story arc. Fascinating.

Take equal parts,

• reticent loner
• desirable but damaged man
• warrior skills acquired from experiences he can’t talk about
• doesn’t care about others, but really, he does
• heightened intuition from time spent in nature
• respects women, but is really just too special for them

soak in glue, build a Papier-mâché character that dissolves in water.

I stubbornly, naively, hold on to the idea that if we lavish wealth and accolades on artists and writers, there ought to be something there.

I’m a dope.