63 pages • 2 hours read
Harlan CobenFool Me Once
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Lasting Consequences of Trauma and Secrets
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of murder, domestic violence, war, PTSD, and suicide.
A hallmark of Harlan Coben’s work is the unearthing of secrets and past traumas that alter his characters’ perceptions of self, family, and security. The unknowable nature of even the people to whom they are closest instigates his mystery plots, often leading to violence. In Fool Me Once, nearly every character contends with secrecy and the lingering effects of trauma. As the protagonist, Maya’s uncovering of secrets comprises the bulk of the novel. Before the first chapter, everything that Maya thought about Joe was challenged by his ostensible admission that he killed Claire and that he would be willing to kill Maya to protect the Burkett legacy. The stress of keeping her own crimes under wraps increases her paranoia and mistrust. The trauma of her actions overseas causes PTSD flashbacks, which she tries to muscle through until she can put all the pieces of Joe’s mysteries together. She cannot escape what’s she done, and that trauma challenges everything around her, including her relationship with her daughter, Lily. Lastly, having been through combat, Maya is unable to take seriously the petty complaints and triumphs of the moms around her, a limitation that leads her to turn her scrutiny toward her best friend, Eileen. Through Maya’s character, Coben suggests that trauma and secrets are damaging unless tackled or shared.
Corey’s main trade is secrets. By exposing misdeeds and violations that often have deadly consequences, Corey aims to make the world a better place. According to him, truth equals accountability, and his philosophy bleeds into Maya’s arc. Since she is trying to keep the audio from the helicopter mission off his website, Corey manipulates Claire into investigating the Burkett family’s many secrets. Claire uncovers a fatal pharmaceutical scandal and cover-up in addition to the crime that set the dominos of the novel’s plot in motion: Joe’s murder of Andrew. Corey is the novel’s mouthpiece for the idea that keeping secrets perpetuates systemic harm.
Andrew’s death is shrouded in secrecy. Suicide is taboo for the clan, so Judith pays to keep the presumed nature of his death quiet, which ultimately culminates in Tom Douglass’s death years later. However, Andrew did not kill himself, nor did he accidentally drown; Joe killed him when he proved unable to move past Joe’s murder of Theo. As these secrets compound, more people in the novel die, emphasizing its point that secrets perpetuate traumatic events.
The Reintegration of Veterans Into Civilian Life
Maya and Shane and their fellow veterans have struggled to fit into society since returning from combat. The high-stakes pressure that they faced overseas was literally a matter of life and death, and many of the characters witnessed or took part in violence. Maya continually positions herself as more “enlightened” than the other mothers who are consumed by their children and housework. Maya is not alone in having a difficult time after reentering society. Maya and Shane are able to be themselves at their gun range, a place that is associated with violence. Commiserating with her fellow veterans, Maya feels understood. Relationship struggles are a common topic of conversation among her friends. They liken the cognitive dissonance of their worldview—particularly in contrast to their partners’—to a horror movie. The veterans see ghosts all around them but feel unable to convince their loved ones of their reality. The novel conveys that reintegrating into society is a challenge for veterans since society is not set up to help them and contributes to their cognitive dissonance.
When Maya attends the carnival for her niece and nephew, she is aware that she will not be able to integrate back into America. The “Norman Rockwell” scene feels far removed from the “hellholes” of her military career. She doesn’t belong there, as she is aware of the price of the freedoms that the other families enjoy. She especially balks at the misappropriation of military lingo in everyday life. Overprotective parenting, known as “helicoptering,” particularly irks Maya, herself an elite special ops helicopter pilot. The rotors that she hears every night as her PTSD crests is a far cry from the low-stakes maternal overkill of the other moms. Coach Phil likens the soccer field that Alexa sits on the sidelines of to a “battlefield” of which he is the general. These details emphasize the cognitive dissonance that the soldier characters feel as they sit in safety and remember the violence of the battlefield.
Maya’s unease goes beyond social irritation. Once a soldier, always a soldier, and she scans the perimeter of every location for danger, aware that evil can—and often does—strike “back home in the good ol’ USA” (91). Appraising the parents happily cavorting with the families in the sun-drenched safety of suburbia, Maya thinks, “They all just didn’t have clue” (29). Even a fight with her nanny, Isabella, gets conflated with battle in Maya’s mind: “Turning her back on the enemy. Amateur hour” (75). This suggests that Maya lives in a constant state of readiness for war despite being far away from it, underscoring her difficulty in reintegrating into civilian life.
Maya’s guns represent her fear of threat. She considers herself “a gun nut” (98). Maya’s obsession with guns is life-long, but she finds it difficult to explain why to others. She understands that they alter her behavior when she’s armed but nevertheless finds comfort in them. It’s another behavior that sets Maya apart from the other suburban moms and suggests that society is not well set up to reintegrate veterans.
Gender Expectations and the Performance of Identity
Maya appraises the women in her life with varying degrees of approval. As a former soldier, Maya has an automatic dislike for people who take frivolous things seriously and their security for granted. Since she was a helicopter pilot in her former military career, Maya shows particular disdain for her fellow suburban moms who describe themselves as helicopter parents:
Maya had tried to dive into the whole ‘mommy world,’ the coffee klatches with her fellow moms where they discussed toilet training, top preschools, stroller safety ratings, and slow-bragged with genuine interest about their own children’s mundane development (28-29).
While her opinions and behavior are informed by her time in the military, Maya is generally judgmental to any woman who adheres to traditional feminine qualities. Coben hence explores the double-edged sword of gender expectations since these suburban mothers in the novel feel pressure to perform their femininity but are judged for doing so.
Maya despises cooking, loves shooting guns—an activity she codes as masculine—and despairs at the ways that life diminishes ambitious women. Eileen, once fierce and independent, shrank in the face of the abuse of her ex-husband, Ricky. Maya stops short of blaming her for the abuse, but Maya can’t reconcile that a strong woman like Eileen would allow herself to be abused. This similarly emphasizes the double-edged sword: Eileen experiences abuse of patriarchal powers but is also implicitly blamed. Maya is critical of her friend. On the other hand, she observes that, while golden boys go on to thrive as “masters of the universe,” ambitious girls “seem[] to die of slow societal suffocation” (102). Maya is critical of the patriarchy here, but she also reinforces it with her narrow view of gender exceptions and performing a masculine identity in order to take herself seriously.
Maya also weaponizes stereotypes. She plays the “woman card” with Detective Kierce to wave away the severity of her confrontation with Isabella. During the attempted kidnapping, she acts like a weak-willed wife to stop the assailants from frisking her. This emphasizes the novel’s presentation of the performative aspects of gender identity since Maya is easily able to act and be perceived as feminine.
Though they are enemies by the end of the novel, there is a sense of mutual appreciation between Judith and Maya. Judith is also a social chameleon, alternating between her Burkett matriarch role and her psychiatrist persona; she practices under her maiden name. Maya can still see glimmers of something “untamed” in Judith’s eyes. Maya only champions womanhood when it adheres to masculine traits.
Related Titles
By Harlan Coben
