Promise Me

Promise Me is a thriller by the American writer Harlan Coben, published in 2006. It is one of the books about Myron Bolitar.

The novel begins with a promise. Myron has told the teenage daughters of a friend that if they ever get into trouble, at any hour, they can call him and he will come and collect them without asking questions.

At twenty past two one morning the telephone rings on his nightstand. The girl at the other end is Aimee Biel, and she is frightened. Myron gets out of bed, drives down to a cold street corner in Manhattan and picks her up, and then, against his own better judgment, agrees to a further request and drops her at an address in the suburbs that he does not know.

That is the mistake he lives to regret. The last he sees of her is a wave from a darkened porch, after which she turns and disappears into the night and apparently off the face of the earth. What follows is his attempt to find her and to work out what he has done.