The Match is the second Wilde book by Harlan Coben. The first book was The Boy From the Woods.
About:
'At the age of somewhere between 35 and 45 - he didn't know exactly how old he was - Wilde found his father ...'Wilde has grown up knowing nothing of his family, and even less about his own identity . All he knows is that, as a young child, he was found living a feral existence in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey.
He became known simply as Wilde, the boy from the woods.
Now Wilde has had a hit on the DNA website he has been researching. A 100% match. His father. They meet up, and Wilde soon realises that his father doesn't even know he had a son and is as mystified as Wilde is by his existence.
Undaunted, Wilde continues his research for his family on DNA websites where he becomes caught up in a community of online doxxers, a secret group committed to exposing anonymous trolls.
Then one by one these doxxers start to die, and it soon becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting this secret community - and that his next victim might be Wilde himself ..."
We read Boy From the Woods a few years ago in our Mystery Book Club. We really liked it and the cliffhanger was that Wilde sent his DNA in to a testing website to see if he could find out anything from his past; who were is parents, where is he from, are there any living relatives out there.
Enter book two. Wilde has a match and a message from the match. By the time he decides he will respond to the inquiry, the "match" has deleted their info. Wilde calls on his resources to hack in and find out who the match was and travels to meet (surprise) the match. That of course doesn't go perfectly, so he slips away without anymore contact.
More develops with the match and matches, crossing over to a disappearance of a reality star that he may be related to, which then leads to some weird bad people (the doxxers) on the internet etc. etc.
Wilde calls on Hester, his lawyer friend and her romantic interest, Oren, for help and support along the way. I really like Hester. She is a smart, wise cracking but soft older woman from New York. She is pretty awesome.
Wilde also explores his own romantic interest in Laila, the wife of his deceased best friend and Hester's son. Laila was also in book one.
There is some explanation between the characters about how DNA matches work and it is confusing. I have been to some genealogy webinars where it is explained and it can be pretty convoluted. But don't let that frustrate you.
The ending is pretty good and does leave room for another book but I read there are no plans for book three at this time.
Harlan Coben is my new favorite author I think. I also like the series they have made from his books that are on Netflix.
Check them out.
