No second chance
No Second Chance (English original title: No Second Chance ) is a crime novel by the US author Harlan Coben , which hepublished in 2003 .
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Chapters 1 - 7 (The First Chance)
After cardiac arrest and a twelve-day coma, Dr. Marc Seidman at the hospital, where Detective Bob Regan reveals to him that he was the victim of a robbery. Although he survived seriously injured - one bullet grazed his head but the other hit him in the chest - his wife, Monica, succumbed to her injuries. As if that wasn't enough, Marc's six-month-old daughter Tara is also missing.
The first suspicions fall on Marc's own sister Stacy, who is a drug addict and has little contact with the family. But even though, to Marc's knowledge, she has never been to his new house where the robbery took place, her fingerprints are found there. It doesn't take long - Marc has now been released from the hospital - when Monica's father, the extremely rich Edgar, receives a ransom demand. He wants to pay the requested two million without further ado and warns Marc to take the threatening letter seriously, because it says that you only have one chance to hand over the ransom without the police interfering.
Marc himself takes over the handover of the money, but he turns on the police - also on the advice of his lawyer and best friend Lenny - who follow him at a supposedly safe distance. Marc hands over the money and then receives a shocking phone call: The kidnappers know that he has contacted the police; he lost his chance to get his daughter back.
But the marked notes lead to a lead and you find out that it is actually Marc's sister who tries to issue one of them. When you followed her, trusting Marc's guesswork, to a secluded family-owned hut, you found her dead - and there was Tara's romper suit. From the child himself: no trace.
Chapters 8-19 (The Second Chance)
A full 18 months pass during which Marc has to fight against the looming madness and witnesses how the children of his best friend Lenny grow up before his eyes and his own daughter remains missing. The surgeon - he specializes in deformities or disfigurements of the face caused by an accident - flees to work with his colleague Zia.
It throws him a little off track when he meets his first great love, Rachel, who once worked for the FBI, again and he feels how much he is still attached to her. A second woman brings unrest into his life: Dina Levinsky, who lived with her family in Marc's current house, had a terrible childhood here. Marc doesn't know any details, only knows the rumors that she was abused by her father. What he knows is that she was always bullied at school. She speaks to him and draws his attention to a diary that she has hidden in the cellar. When he was looking for this, he came across a CD-ROM that was apparently hidden here by his wife Monica. Although she asks for a password, it becomes clear that Monica has hired a detective agency for whatever.
Then everything gets out of hand when Edgar receives a second offer: Another two million are to be paid; it is the second chance to hand it over without the police. Marc should hand over the money again. In desperation, he turns to his ex-girlfriend Rachel, who is no longer officially a police officer after her husband's violent death - so he does not violate the requirement, but still has professional help. She then advises him to be consistent and to insist on a direct exchange with his daughter. When he made this clear to the kidnappers, they said he shouldn't make any demands or he would be left hanging for another 18 months. On Rachel's advice, Marc remains consistent - and the kidnapper hangs up.
Chapters 20-30 (Rachel is suspected)
The two kidnappers are lovers, whose head is a woman named Lydia. She adopted this name to distance herself from her previous life as a child star on television series.
The second handover works, albeit under adverse circumstances; a fight ensues in which Rachel is injured. But she was able to place a transmitter in the money that will help them. Meanwhile, Rachel herself is getting more and more targeted by the FBI, when it becomes clear that Monica is hiring the detective agency to spy on her as her husband's ex-girlfriend; in fact, some of the images appear as if Rachel had made contact with Marc, even if none of the photos shows them together.
Chapter 31 - The End (Solving the Case)
Nothing is what it seems, and the individual facts hit Marc like a punch. Everything goes back to his mentally unstable wife Monica. Out of (unjustified) jealousy of Rachel, she keeps telling herself that her husband will soon leave her for Rachel and take Tara with him. She gets a gun and shoots Marc down. Marc's best friend Lenny arrives - he knows where Marc keeps his gun and shoots Monica in self-defense.
What to do with tare As a lawyer he has a good client named Bacard who has been arranging adoptive children for decades; he plays Tara to him and she is handed over to a childless couple. But Bacard proves to be more unscrupulous than expected: He uses the golden opportunity to stage a kidnapping that never happened to rake in additional money, which initially works out well.
Bacard doesn't shy away from murder either: Marc's sister Stacy remains a weak link, because she knows about the gun that Monica bought. Without further ado, everything is turned in such a way that suspicion falls on them; Bacard has them murdered.
At the end of the novel, Marc sees his daughter again - she has been happy with her foster family for years. But Lenny, plagued by a guilty conscience, does what Marc does not have the heart: He inaugurates Tara's new family. Tara's parents (they call the child Natasha) and Marc decide to raise the child together as much as possible - Marc moves with Rachel to do this.
Classification in the work of the author
After No Death Word and No Life Sign , this book is the author's third stand-alone novel alongside Coben's Myron Bolitar series . Like the previous ones, the novel is alternately written in first-person form (this time from Marc Seidman's point of view) and in an omniscient perspective. Like all Coben novels, No Second Chance has a complicated plot with many twists and turns that are only fully clarified on the last few pages.
Coben connects his works through the appearance of different characters. In No Second Chances appear or be mentioned: Dr. David Beck and the serial killer KillRoy (from No Death Word ) and FBI agents Joseph Pistillo and Claudia Fisher (from No Sign of Life ).
The German title No Second Chance is intended to remind of the previous titles No mortal word and No sign of life - but this is the work of the German translator; in the original the titles have nothing in common.
Film adaptations
In October 2015, the French TV station TF1 broadcast the six-part miniseries based on the novel Une chance de trop . Unlike in the book, a woman is the main character in the series. Alexandra Lamy played the main role.
The station Sat.1 was in 2017 a German version as a TV two-parter No second chance produce. It is based on the novel and its French film adaptation. Directed by Alexander Dierbach based on a script by Hannah Hollinger . Petra Schmidt-Schaller plays the main role .
Web links
Review notes on No Second Chances at perlentaucher.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Une chance de trop. In: tf1.fr. TF1, accessed November 7, 2017 (French).
- ↑ “Where is my child?”: Petra Schmidt-Schaller is looking for her daughter in “No Second Chance” (AT) // Start of shooting for the SAT.1 thriller with Sebastian Bezzel, Inez Bjørg David, Josefine Preuß u. a. Press release. Sat.1, July 14, 2017, accessed November 7, 2017 .
- ↑ No second chance. Sat.1 two-part event. Ariane Krampe Filmproduktion, accessed November 7, 2017 .