Vol. 4 No. 12, December 2007
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Book Review: The Woods
Harlen Coben, Orion
The art of writing a “thriller” is not as simple as it seems. It takes more than just gruesome murders, incredible chases and unusual plot twists. And the master of this genre in today’s world is Harlen Coben. All his novels are well-plotted with the requisite elements of any thriller, but with every component so interwoven that the reader must pay attention to even the most mundane detail. The plots are so complicated, but eventually explainable, that he takes at least the last 10 pages to lay out the books’ denouement.
Coben’s last, The Woods, is not as suspenseful as some of Coben’s other books, but has his trademark thrills and twists and turns that keep the reader guessing until the last page.
The book’s hero, Paul Copeland, is an Essex County, New Jersey prosecutor, who is haunted by the death of his sister and three others in a summer camp slaughter 20 years earlier. Copeland is also just recovering from the loss of his wife from cancer and coping with the realities of being a single father.
Coben’s character development isn’t as deep as it could be, but with all the plot twists and turns, he’d have to expand the book by at least 100 pages to be able to do justice to all the seemingly interesting characters he introduces. For The Woods, he actually brings back two interesting detectives from his previous novel, The Persuader. That means he doesn’t have to spend the time explaining who they are and how they figure into the story, which is a good thing, but the story starts to accelerate about halfway through the book and we don’t want any detours.
Regular readers of Coben may see some of the plot twists coming. That doesn’t mean he’s becoming predictable; that means the reader is beginning to think like the author, which makes his books kind of like jigsaw puzzles.
Despite what seems to be a trademark, this book, like all his previous books, works. You can’t put the novel down. Each page makes you wonder what will change on the next page. The Woods will make a great gift for the mystery fan in your family.
