Gone for Good was published by Delacorte Press in 2002, following the success of Tell No One, and it demonstrates Coben’s mastery of the family-secret thriller — a form he essentially invented and that has since been imitated by dozens of writers.
Will Klein’s older brother Ken disappeared eleven years ago, on the same night that their neighbor Julie Miller was murdered. Ken was the prime suspect, and the family assumed he was guilty — until now. Will’s girlfriend Sheila suddenly vanishes, and the circumstances of her disappearance echo Ken’s so precisely that Will is forced to reopen the old case. What he discovers — about his brother, about Sheila, about his own family — overturns everything he thought he knew about the people closest to him.
Coben’s signature technique is the cascading revelation: each discovery leads to another, each answer raises new questions, and the final truth is always more complicated (and more disturbing) than any intermediate hypothesis. The reader is kept in a state of continuous uncertainty, unable to trust any character completely because any character might be hiding something. The emotional payoff comes not from the puzzle’s solution but from the human consequences of secrets kept too long.
Collecting Gone for Good
First edition (Delacorte Press, New York, 2002): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Without jacket: $5–$10