Harlan Coben, The Woods

Just one Harlan Coben the best crime writer of the my century

'I see my father with that shovel.'

Harlan Coben opens his bestselling crime novel The Woods with this disturbing recollection. Significantly it is 'that shovel' and as we accompany the protagonist 'Cope' through his difficult confrontations with his past, which is fraught with betrayals, Soviet barbarism, mistaken identity and death, we gradually realise how ironically appropriate the opening line might be. What is the father digging for? Who is his trying to resurrect bone by bone? Actions are metaphors for life itself.

For Paul Copeland (a county Prosecutor) finds 'seeing' profoundly challenging. There are so many secrets past and present, that his whole identity about who is is comes under savage scrutiny. Deceit is ubiquitous. Blindness is survival, yet self-destruction. The price of being Lazarus is high indeed!

Coben is superb at layering his novels in terms of plot and he renders the lives of his characters surreal. Like an archaelogical dig(first line again) The Woods visits and then revisits the past proving that any apparent fact, any assumption can be placed in jeopardy through a moment's revelation.

There is something very solid and enduring about Coben's narrative here and character and place are given enough 'reality' to persuade and support the changing possibilities of the intricate plot. The protaganonist has a dependable foil called 'Muse(!!) and the writing style is polished and assured.

Enough to say that 'everything connects' and the final pages of the novel still holds out an element of surprise with a somewhat ambiguous ending.

A very entertaining and quite creepy read I have to admit

I loved the way the way the different stories intermingled. This book is one that I could read over and over again and have! It is one of the few crime books that has literally kept me on the edge of my seat.

The Woods

Harlan Coben

Dutton, Apr 2007, $26.95

ISBN: 0525950125

At a summer camp, with their counselors preoccupied with one another, four teenagers snuck into the woods at night never to return. Two were found dead (Doug Billingham and Margot Green); two vanished, but are assumed dead (Gil Perez and Camille Copeland); all victims of the Summer Slasher serial killer. No one was caught as two families mourned their loss but were able to obtain some closure with funerals; the other two families didn't even have a body to inter.

Though the guilt lingers as he was one of the counselors, two decades later Paul "Cope" Copeland has somewhat moved past the loss of his sister Camille, whose body was never found because of another tragedy. The Essex County prosecutor mourns the loss of his wife to cancer, but more important he is a single father raising a six-year-old daughter Cara. However, the past returns when a murder victim in Manhattan turns out to be the male missing teen Doug. Cope needs to know the truth even as he works a high visibility rape case. He meets up with the other neglectful counselor from that fateful night, his first true love Lucy Gold, who also feels the guilt of failure.

Though very exciting as the audience wants to know whether Camille lives and if yes why did she fail to contact her family, there are too many distracting side-plays involving the lead couple that take away from the prime suspense. The storyline is action-packed and will hook readers who will want to know where Harlan Coben is taking them. With a final slam dunk twist that will stun and please readers, THE WOODS is an exhilarating, investigative thriller.

Harriet Klausner