Product Description

Twenty years ago, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night. Two were found murdered, and the others were never seen again. Four families had their lives changed forever. Now, two decades later, they are about to change again.

For Paul Copeland, the county prosecutor of Essex, New Jersey, mourning the loss of his sister has only recently begun to subside. Cope, as he is known, is now dealing with raising his six- year-old daughter as a single father after his wife has died of cancer. Balancing family life and a rapidly ascending career as a prosecutor distracts him from his past traumas, but only for so long. When a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to Cope, the well-buried secrets of the prosecutor’s family are threatened.

Is this homicide victim one of the campers who disappeared with his sister? Could his sister be alive? Cope has to confront so much he left behind that summer twenty years ago: his first love, Lucy; his mother, who abandoned the family; and the secrets that his Russian parents might have been hiding even from their own children. Cope must decide what is better left hidden in the dark and what truths can be brought to the light.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161120 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this disappointing stand-alone from bestseller Coben (Promise Me), Paul "Cope" Copeland, acting county prosecutor for Essex County, N.J., and Lucy Gold, his long-lost summer camp love, are still haunted by a fateful night, decades earlier, when their nighttime tryst allowed some younger campers, including Cope's sister, to venture into the nearby forest, where they apparently fell victim to the Summer Slasher, a serial killer. Cope's intense focus on a high-profile rape prosecution of some wealthy college students shifts after one of the Slasher's victims, whose body was never found, turns up as a recent corpse in Manhattan, casting doubt on the official theory of the old case. Cope's own actions on that night again come under scrutiny, even as the highly placed fathers of the men he's prosecuting work to unearth as many skeletons as possible to pressure him into dropping the rape case. Less than compelling characters fail to compensate for a host of implausibilities. Hopefully, Coben will return to form with his next book. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
In this stand-alone legal thriller, Harlan Coben presents a riveting courtroom drama, creates riveting players, and delves into family secrets, love, loss, mistakes, and betrayal. A few critics noted that while The Woods falls into Coben's typical formula—a past crime affects innocent people in the present—it still comes off as fresh. The trial scenes, Cope's ruminations on what really happened that night, and the back-and-forth narration are particularly well done. Only the Washington Post faulted the novel's cheap thrills, improbable revelations, and awkward conclusion. Nevertheless, few readers will remain unaffected by its emotional heft.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Review
Paul Copeland is a county prosecutor working on a difficult case when two policemen arrive and take him to the morgue to identify a body. The case sets up echoes from Paul's past, forcing him to relive 20-year-old events and the day that destroyed his innocence. When he was a teenager, Paul was at a summer camp with his sister. He neglected his duties, instead rendezvousing with a girl, and in the end what started as a prank resulted in four deaths. Haunted daily by his actions, Paul now sees an opportunity for redemption. Can he sort out what really happened on that fateful night?

The exploration of ordinary people with life-shattering secrets is a common thread in Coben's novels. Instead of this premise becoming stale, though, he has created another surprising and emotional story that will remain with the reader long after the last page is finished. One of Coben's best, and a necessary purchase. -- Library Journal

Customer Reviews

4 1/2 Stars...Soft-Hearted, Shallower, Suspenseful
With "The Woods," Coben proves again to be one of the most consistent thriller writers around. This is familiar territory, with familiar themes and characters (even a few carryovers from previous stories), and yet Coben manages to connect with us on emotional and intellectual levels.

Twenty years earlier, the Copeland family dealt with a horrific situation involving the woods surrounding a summer camp. Now, one of the original homicide victims has resurfaced--with a different name and hints that he survived. Paul Copeland finds himself dragged back into the anguish of that dreadful evening. Not only did he lose his sister, he lost real connection with his parents, due to their grief. As he explores the widening mysteries, he is faced to confront hard truths about each and every person he has loved.

As always, Coben mixes suspense, mystery, subplots, and twists, with themes of family and loyalty and loss. "The Woods" is a fast read. Although a bit shallower on some levels than "Gone for Good" or "Tell No One," this story still gives us more reason to care than many other thrillers out there. Coben's soft heart comes through once again--and for that, I'll keep coming back.

Great writing, but some of the plot is "out there"
Originality is always a prized quality in a novel, but sometimes you just need a predictable, unchallenging, fast-food sort of book for a hectic time. That's when I turn to the "thrillers" shelf and writers like Harlan Coben.

"The Woods" is the story of Essex County Prosecutor Paul Copeland and his twenty-year-old family tragedy. His sister, Camille, and three other campers went into the woods one summer night; two bodies were found, but not his sister's. The tragedy tore Paul's family apart, and he never came to terms with his role as the camp counselor who should have been keeping watch.

When the other missing camper turns up dead -- but recently so -- Paul's world spins out of control again. He's embroiled in the rape trial of two fraternity boys and their families will do anything to keep the boys out of prison. The threat to Paul's family and career is vicious -- unrealistically so, I thought, but maybe I'm naive in the wicked ways of the world.

Coben writes with a satisfying assurance and the characters are reasonably well-defined, though the women are strangely stereotyped and hard to know. Paul Copeland moves plausibly through the well-paced story. While I didn't care passionately about his outcome, I did wish him well -- assuming that everything would be happily resolved, as it usually is in this type of book. Coben surprised me with an ambiguous ending, which I considered to be a good thing.

The complicated plot is developed and wrapped up well, a real strength of this book, though there are some elements that fit poorly in the story. Specifically, I wish he had downplayed or eliminated the brutal tactics of the accused boys' families; the stunning private investigator posing as the dead man's girlfriend; the brain-fried ex-hippie; and especially the KGB retrospective. The KGB connection should not, in my opinion, have been written into the plot; it was the jarring element for me.

I also would have preferred more development of a story line with Paul's sister-in-law and her husband, accused of embezzling from a charity in the name of Paul's late wife. Paul seems to have given that situation less attention than expected.

In spite of the shortcomings of the plot, I did enjoy Coben's smooth, satisfying writing and the effective flow of the story -- and the way "The Woods" represents the genre. I knew Coben's work only by reputation, and I would read another for the pleasure of his writing style.

For those strong pluses, and considering this book against others of its type, I am going with four stars.

Linda Bulger, 2008

Very good thriller, but not his best...
Coben became a "must read" author for me some time ago, and while this book did not disappoint, it doesn't stand up there with his best works, including his last novel, PROMISE ME. His most common theme is certainly present, that is, the past echoing into the present.

In this tale, a prosecutor is confronted with a Coben-special blast from the past: a body turns up who appears to be the boy who supposedly died 20 years ago with the prosecutor's sister and two other young people at a camp where all of them worked. Of course, his body was never found, nor was Camille's (the sister).

Paul, the prosecutor, begins tracing down leads, and with the help of an old flame from the camp days, begins bringing the past to the surface, as commonly occurs in Coben's works.

It's a well plotted story that left me just a bit cold at the end, and I think it was because I never came to care about Coben's characters quite as much as I usually do. They seemed, as a group, to be less attractive than usual. Perhaps (or probably, even) this is by the author's design, but it didn't work as well for me.

Even so, I wanted to get to the payoff and had trouble putting the book down. Just not as much trouble as I usually have with Coben's works.