He’s done it again! Harlan Coben lovers of such classics like Tell No One and the Myron Bolitar series will adore Pilljar: The Thrilling Jar, now on bookshelves and already being turned into a major MAX miniseries. In it, Coben takes us to a world, much like the earth, where a lot of stuff that doesn’t relate to the story also takes place. 

It takes only five chapters to get to the heart of the suspense: What is the pilljar? What’s in it? Where did it come from? Does it always sit on the shelf? Woah! Did it move? No, it didn’t. But can you imagine if it did!?

Just as with Netflix’s smash adaptation, Fool Me Once, the lead character, Cindy, must deal with a tragic monotony of normalcy, coping with the traumas of everyday tedium in passively aggressive, unhelpful ways. Yet, just as with all of Coben’s signature minutiae, there’s plenty of twists. The part where it turns out the guy with all the rakes and mops is actually a janitor, was riveting. And in the end, when you’re wondering who picked up the paintbrush, and it turned out to literally be the woman who was holding the paintbrush, you’ll just die.

Around the middle of the book Coben throws us another plot twist. Chapter 21 delves into the origins and evolution of 12th century Celtic music, and while it didn’t make any sense or relate to the story or characters on any level, not even abstractly, it was, in its own way very educational despite being somewhat elementary in nature, as if written for an 8th grade term paper.

From there you can’t help but read on; with deft, verbose styling, Corben takes you on a thrilling crawl through the ankle-deep, semi-dark world of badgering people with horrible teeth, who may or may not, and definitely did not, have anything to do with anything. It was also an interesting strategy to solve the mystery and reveal all key clues in the prologue; it helped introduce the other approximately 211 subsequent clues that were more ‘extemporaneous’ and ‘unrelated.’ A randomly-timed Deus Ex Machina in every chapter! The good guy is the bad guy!

Only at the end do you receive the kind of clarity and stupor that makes you understand humanity. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stare aimlessly into the plain, white wall.