Review: The Boy from the Woods

The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first discovered Harlan Coben with TELL NO ONE and the novels which followed it, novels about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations. Later I found his Myron Bolitar series, with his series character, a sports agent come investigator. THE BOY FROM THE WOODS is almost a hybrid of the two. There is an unusual character, Wilde, the titular ‘boy’, who was actually discovered as a child living in the woods alone, who has the potential to be that series character, Coben’s own Jack Reacher or Joe Pike, with a dollop of IQ-like Holmesian deductive skills thrown in. This is not to suggest that Coben has become derivative - he is still the exciting writer of suspense he has always been - just that he has found a character with the potential to rival those mentioned.

The plot is intriguing - a disappearance or is it a kidnapping; rich media-types; spoilt, bullying school kids and those caught in their orbit - and is held together by a cast of characters, particularly Wilde and his surrogate mother-figure, TV-lawyer, Hester Crimstein, of whom we look forward to meeting again. A very good thriller from a master of the thriller and the promise of a first-class series.

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