Have been reading this author for the past few weeks, harlan coban, well no literary or abstruse pregnancy of ideas or great postulations of any kind in his work, just pure and simple dramatic thriller setting, I simply have been loving it. Infact so much so that I finished two books from the guy already and plan to buy a new one today.
The central character of one Myron Bolitar runs through as the protagonist in all his books, the tremendous layers he is able to bring out in this characterization is simply phenomenal. A multidimensional real, human character who at the same time is in the 0.01 top percentile in worldly rat race.
The best part is the unabashed moral ambivalence Myron possesses and the ease with which the author creates sequences where time and again this ambivalence gets highlighted, underlined whatever. The almost superhuman ability of Myron to digest emotional poison and remain normal is such a welcome break, what with everyone in general specializing in conflicted characterizations, scarred by experiences leaving deep psychological dents in personality.
Myron simply drives his car real fast and furious to get issues(moral/emotional/logical whatever) out of his mind, while I am sure most authors would have had him running around to repeated sessions with a flummoxed shrink, to crease out the resulting deep behavioral imbalances and psychological conflicts.
This I believe is the singular charm of myron bolitar series to me; the apparent old fashioned masculinity of character, which off late is so out of vogue that we all are supposed to be(and expected to comply) heavily conflicted, emotionally lost, confused and obfuscated in our decision making. The exceeding supersede 'nce to emotional quotient and feminism in the past few decades, to me seem to be the culprits behind this trend.
The X chromosome has been wishing and subvertly working on, dominating the sensitivities of this world, hence a fad or should I say an avalanche everywhere; of being confused, conflicted, scheming, easily hurt, emotionally unstable; all these traits have become so fashionable, that to be able to be called an 'evolved' 'contemporary' 'in sync' 'metro-sexual' male, it is already mandatory to imbibe and brandish these traits in abundance, at every minutest drop of the proverbial hat.
In the process the XY has already become XY-Y/2. Wonder how long before the remnants of the Y are devoured and the world is simply a sea of absolutely similar humans, the fine distinction in characters the almighty must have so painstakingly built and would have felt tempted to aggrandize about,each time he looked down upon the earth, is slowly and surely under threat of obliteration.
The X chromosome has been wishing and subvertly working on, dominating the sensitivities of this world, hence a fad or should I say an avalanche everywhere; of being confused, conflicted, scheming, easily hurt, emotionally unstable; all these traits have become so fashionable, that to be able to be called an 'evolved' 'contemporary' 'in sync' 'metro-sexual' male, it is already mandatory to imbibe and brandish these traits in abundance, at every minutest drop of the proverbial hat.
In the process the XY has already become XY-Y/2. Wonder how long before the remnants of the Y are devoured and the world is simply a sea of absolutely similar humans, the fine distinction in characters the almighty must have so painstakingly built and would have felt tempted to aggrandize about,each time he looked down upon the earth, is slowly and surely under threat of obliteration.
