No Second Chance was published by Dutton in 2003, and its opening pages are among the most gripping in contemporary thriller fiction. Dr. Marc Seidman wakes in a hospital bed, shot twice. His wife Monica is dead — murdered beside him. His six-month-old daughter Tara is gone. A ransom note arrives demanding two million dollars, but when Marc pays, the exchange goes wrong and Tara is not returned.
The novel follows Marc’s increasingly desperate search for his daughter, which takes him from suburban New Jersey into a world of organized crime, identity fraud, and decades-old secrets. Coben’s plotting is ruthlessly efficient: every revelation arrives at exactly the moment of maximum impact, and the final twist recontextualizes the entire narrative in a way that is both surprising and retrospectively inevitable.
The emotional stakes are higher than in most thrillers because the missing person is an infant — a child too young to understand what is happening to her, too young to call for help, too young to survive without care. Marc’s desperation is not abstract; it is the visceral terror of a parent who knows that every passing hour reduces his daughter’s chances of survival.
Collecting No Second Chance
First edition (Dutton, New York, 2003): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$30
- Without jacket: $3–$8