Tell No One

International bestselling book Tell No One by renowned American crime-writer Harlan Coben was first published in 2001. It tells of the lengths that David and Elizabeth Beck will go to be reunited with each other and conversely, the measures taken by their opponents to stop this happening. David and Elizabeth were making their annual visit to Lake Charmaine, a place where they summered as children, when Elizabeth was abducted and killed, and David was left for dead.

However, eight years later, when David is working in New York City as a pediatrician, the allegedly dead Elizabeth gets in touch with him via emails containing coded messages that only the two of them understand. Moreover, two bodies have been found dug up by the lake near the site of Elizabeth’s murder, and the police have resumed contact with David because his blood type has been found on the baseball bat that was unearthed with the bodies.

Meanwhile, billionaire Griffin Scope is alarmed at the news of the resurfaced bodies, and he sends his henchmen Larry Gandle and Eric Wu to do everything they can to stop incriminating information about his murdered son, Brandon, coming out.

Three events occur simultaneously: David goes in search of any information he can find relating to the night of Elizabeth’s death; Gandle and Wu are also searching for Elizabeth and tracking David’s email, and the police gather the evidence they feel is needed to incriminate David for Elizabeth’s murder.

Following David’s visit to Elizabeth’s college friend, Rebecca Schayes,Gandle and Wu murder Rebecca. The police, however, think David murdered Rebecca to keep her quiet. David runs from the police, his chief mission being to appear at Washington Square in time to meet Elizabeth. In a tight situation, David calls Tyrese Barton, the drugdealer father of one of his young patients, TJ. Tyrese helps David disappear for a while and brings him back to Washington Square, where Elizabeth has alighted. She runs away, however, when she realizes that Scope’s people, Gandle and Wu, are camouflaged into the scene. Tyrese comes to David’s rescue after a painful confrontation with Wu, and they head to the office of Peter Flannery, an attorney contact in Elizabeth’s diary. At Flannery’s, David discovers that Elizabeth provided an alibi to the once presumed killer of Brandon Scope, Helio Gonzalez.

Meanwhile, Detective Carlson—with the assistance of Shauna, David’s sister’s partner—identifies that Hoyt Parker, Elizabeth’s father, misidentified her body at the autopsy.

When David visits Hoyt, the latter tells him that Elizabeth killed Brandon after he threatened her when she discovered that he had been involved with drugs, prostitutes, and other incriminating matters. Hoyt helped Elizabeth escape that night at the lake eight years ago and shot down the two men who Scope had sent to kill her before they got the chance. Thus, the two bodies dug up by the lake were Hoyt’s victims.

Then David gets a message from Shauna, saying that Elizabeth wants to meet him by Lake Charmaine. He meets her there, and they are briefly reunited before David gets a message from Tyrese saying that Scope’s people are holding TJ and will likely harm him unless David identifies himself.

David goes back to Hoyt, who he knows was once on Scope’s payroll, and demands that he should help him. In his bugged car, Hoyt confesses that he was the one who killed Brandon Scope, not Elizabeth. In a final confrontation with Griffin Scope, Hoyt shoots Griffin dead and then shoots himself.

David and Elizabeth are back together, yet they appear to be living apart from the people they know. In a final twist, David confesses that he is the one who shot Brandon after he broke into their house, even though Hoyt and Elizabeth were the ones who dealt with the body.