Harlan Coben

In this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from Harlan Coben, a dead man's secrets fall into the hands of a vigilante antihero--drawing him down a dangerous road. Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors -- and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead -- not only on Patricia's kidnapping, but also on another FBI cold case -- with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man. Windsor Horne Lockwood III -- or Win, as his few friends call him -- doesn't know how his suitcase and his family's stolen painting ended up with a dead man. But his interest is piqued, especially when the FBI tells him that the man who kidnapped his cousin was also behind an act of domestic terrorism -- and that the conspirators may still be at large. The two cases have baffled the FBI for decades, but Win has three things the FBI doesn't: a personal connection to the case; an ungodly fortune; and his own unique brand of justice.

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Part of all worship is abuse. That's what I've learned. Those who love God the most also fear God the most too. ‘God- fearing,' right? The most devout who won't shut up about God's love are always the ones raving about hire and brimstone and eternal damnation. so was in love with Ry or was scared of him? I don't know how thick that line is.

There is an odd psychology amongst those who inherit great wealth, because deep down inside, they realize that they did nothing to earn it, that it really was just a matter of luck, and yet how can it be that they are not special? My father suffers from this malady. “I have all this,” the thinking goes, “ergo I must be somehow superior.” This leads to a constant internal battle to maintain the false narrative of somehow deserving” all these riches, of being “worthy.” You push away the obvious truth —that fate and happenstance have more to do with your lot in life than your “brilliance” or “work ethic”— so as not to shatter your self-created myth. 

We are all masters of self-rationalization. We all seek ways to justity our narrative. We all twist that narrative to make ourselves more sympathetic. You do it too. If you are reading this, you were born in the top one percent of historys population, no question about it. You’ve experienced luxuries that painfully few people in the history of mankind could have even imagined. Yet instead of appreciating that, instead of doing more to help those beneath us, we attack those who got even luckier for not doing enough.

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