Tell No One

One of the key themes in Coben’s novel is the cross-section of people from different strands of society. The two protagonists, pediatrician David Beck and attorney Elizabeth Beck, are representative of a hard-working, socially-conscious class of white, young professionals living in New York at the turn of the millennium. They grew up and met in the same middle class neighborhood. When they are separated as a result of complications from their involvement in Brandon Scope’s death, they find their way back to each other, through their encounters with people of different races and classes.

While Coben describes David and Elizabeth’s background acutely and makes them fully rounded characters, offering details such as Elizabeth’s “pure concentration” (109) and prowess on the tennis court and giving voice to David’s deadpan sense of humor, the ethnic others they encounter largely conform to racial stereotypes. David, the part-time first-person narrator, admits that he is “not above making quick judgements based on appearance—or, to use a more politically current term, racial profiling” and proceeds to do so in his hospital encounters with drugdealer Tyrese who addresses him with “the ghetto glare” (160) that David would expect from someone of Tyrese’s race and class. When David explains how Tyrese was making a fortune on dealing drugs, but his son received free treatment at the hospital because his mother was on Medicaid, he addresses the reader—who he assumes is as privileged, law-abiding, and judgmental as him—with the quip: “Maddening, I know” (94). This aligns the reader with morally superior David, against morally inferior Tyrese.

Coben breaks from stereotype and creates a more rounded character when Tyrese is shown to be atypical in his devotion to his son and his loyalty to David. Without Tyrese’s expertise in running from the law and in fighting, David would not have been able to research into Elizabeth whereabouts without being arrested. When Coben allows the reader into Tyrese’s perspective towards the end of the novel, he shows that the drug dealer’s encounter with David has changed him, when he confesses that he is “tired” (321) of his life of crime. Therefore, Coben attempts to show that the relationship between David and Tyrese is mutually beneficial—until Tyrese’s son is held hostage by Wu, as a result of his connection with David.

Another encounter between the middle-class protagonists and an ethnic other is with Hoyt, Elizabeth, and David’s encounter with Latino Helio Gonzalez. Hoyt, who wants to use Gonzalez as the scapegoat for Brandon’s death, describes him as a “type” he has “seen enough to know” (312) that he was on his way to fulfilling a life of crime and therefore, the perfect person to frame. Elizabeth, on the other hand, sees Gonzalez’s humanity and gives him an alibi in order to save him from “a grave injustice” (312).

However, David’s encounter with Gonzalez is peppered with ethnic stereotyping. David sees Gonzalez sat on a stoop in Queens, with a “smirk” (240) on his face according to the idle, Latino stereotype. David silently accuses Gonzalez of being “unreachable, unfeeling scum” and reflects that “based on surfaces, the very same could be said for Tyrese” (240). These judgements reflect David’s sense of superiority over these men of different races, who he feels are suspect until they prove themselves to be otherwise. David’s prejudice extends to his judgements on Gonzalez’s part of town: “A Latin rhythm tah-tah-tahhed, the beat driving into my chest. Dark-haired women sauntered by in too-clingy spaghetti tops” (240). Rather than merely depicting local color, Coben’s description is othering and riddled with assumptions about Latino expressions of sexuality. This in turn befits David’s anxiety about disproving the alibi that Gonzalez was sleeping with Elizabeth at the time of Brandon Scope’s murder.

While it is usual for novels to dispense more attention on protagonists than minor characters, some readers may find Coben’s pandering to stereotypes in his protagonists’ encounters with non-white others as offensive.