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The Woods

by Harlan Coben



      Sometimes you find great stories unexpectedly... this one caught my eye on the grocery store paperback rack while I was waiting to check out, and I couldn't resist.

At the start of this stand-alone novel, Paul "Cope" Copeland, county prosecutor for Essex County, N.J., is still haunted by the death of two teenagers and the unsolved disappearance of two others, including his sister. Paul was one of the counselors at the summer camp, and was on guard duty that fateful night, but he was busy making love to his girlfriend, Lucy Gold, when the "Summer Slasher" struck. The two missing teens are assumed to be dead and buried somewhere in the woods.

Now he is intensely focused on a rape case involving a couple of wealthy college students, but when the body of one of the missing kids from twenty years ago turns up as a new homicide case, with the kid's parents denying his identity, Paul begins to think maybe his sister is still alive somewhere.

The parents of the boys accused of rape work to reveal as many skeletons as possible from Paul's closet to pressure him into dropping the case against their sons, and his actions from twenty years ago come into question, along with his father's connection to the Russian KGB. This very convoluted plot kept me reading as Paul's problems just kept multiplying. Just when I thought I had the whole thing figured out, Coben delivered a new twist. A couple of the characters were not quite as convincing as they could have been, but the courtroom scenes were riveting, and I connected emotionally with Paul as he faces love, loss and grief, and questions his own loyalty to family and friends as secrets from the past unfold.

This is my first Harlan Coben novel, but I will definitely be back for more. He is a wonderful storyteller.

The Book

Signet / Penguin Group
Reprint edition - April 1, 2008
Paperback
978-0-451-22195-7
Mystery / Suspense
More at Amazon.com
Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Beverly J. Rowe
Reviewed 2008
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