I hate Harlan Coben. He knows too well how to grab me, pull me into his traps of suspense, and where to tighten. When he does this, I can't release his clammy grip, and essential priorities disappear from my line of vision.

In his latest mystery thriller, "Just One Look," Grace Lawson is one of the principal survivors of a club riot years ago that started with a gunshot. At the center of the mel‚e of the tragedy now referred to as the "Boston Massacre" her leg was crushed and she still walks with a limp. The head trauma and the subsequent coma has left her with no memory of what happened on the night, or the week or so that led up to it.

But, her life hasn't been so bad. A marriage of 12 years, a loving husband she met and fell in love with on a French beach, and two great kids. The happy solidity, however, is about to get shaken to the point of meltdown. It starts with the bizarre appearance of a photo among her prints from the photomat--not only having nothing to do with her roll of film, but from a whole different point of time. The people in the photo are, for the most part, unknown... except that the bearded guy could be her husband, Jack.

So, that night when he gets in from work and after he plays around with the children and listens to daughter Emma's new poem, she gets him to herself and shows the photo to him. He freezes. She repeats how she got it. He denies knowing anyone in the picture. He denies that the bearded guy is him. He gets a phone call and Grace goes upstairs to get ready for bed. A half hour later she hears a car engine start up and runs to the window. Jack is rolling out without a word of where he's going, and the strange photograph is gone.

Luckily, Grace had made a digital copy. When Jack doesn't return home or call by the following morning -- something he's never done--she reports him as missing, but realizes she's on her own as far as help from cynical misbelieving cops and their procedures. She uses the photograph to start her own investigation, little prepared for the revelations she will uncover nor for putting herself in the path of a stone cold killer, a mob boss who lost his son at the same tragic event, an ex-convict, a slew of false identities and denials, and a desperate coverup of what really set off the riot that night.

So, after mucking up the character identities and their respective culpabilities just to keep you engrossed and guessing, Coben slowly unravels the many knots in the yarn while keeping you enthralled and questioning to the last line of the epilogue. Like I said, I hate the guy. But, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop reading him and letting him control my life.