39. Caught by Harlan Coben

listened on Chirp
388 pgs.

2010
Adult mystery
Finished 4/30/24
Goodreads rating: 4.01
My rating: 4
Setting: contemporary NJ

My comments:   A TV journalist/reporter investigates an alleged pedophile's crimes after his murder.  She goes on to investigate him and his four Princeton college roommates, coming up with more and more information that doesn't add up.  And then it finally does.  There are a few places that I had to withhold belief, but 80% of the story is decent and believable. I guess.  Maybe.  I read this in bits and pieces whilst falling asleep over the last month. 

Goodreads synopsis:  17 year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.