Published by Signet, 2008. Copyright 2007 by Harlan Coben.
I usually leave my summary rating to the end, but in this case I will put it right up front: 9.5 out of 10. This may be the most satisfying mystery that I have read in many years.
The story centers on the disappearance in the woods (hence the title) of four teens at summer camp some 20 years prior. Two bodies were found, throats slashed. The other two were never found but were presumed dead and buried.
Until a man appears in the morgue, the victim of a murder.
The protagonist, Paul Copeland, was at that camp that summer and is now a county prosecutor. He is called to the morgue as a “person of interest” because papers containing his name, along with newspaper clippings of the slaughter in the woods, were found on the dead guy. He is initially unable to identify the man but then is shocked to see a very distinctive scar on his arm. This is one of the two kids who were presumed dead but whose bodies were never found. The other “presumed dead” person is Camille Copeland, Paul’s older sister. If one of the two survived the night in the woods and just disappeared, is it possible that she also survived and just disappeared? If so, why? If so, where is she?
Paul was not completely blameless that night 20 years prior. He was a camp counselor and was supposed to be looking out for the campers that night, but was, in fact, in the woods, too, losing his virginity to his summer sweetheart, Lucy Silverstein. Both Paul and Lucy lied to police about where they were that night and what they were doing, which they justified as a “little white lie” that protected their reputations and had no bearing on the events that evening. But the guilt followed both for 20 years.
Lucy, now a professor at a small college, gets her own shock: an essay, written by one of her young students anonymously, perfectly details her tryst with Paul that night. It can’t be fiction, but how could anyone – particularly a student who was a toddler at that time – know what she did that night? The terrifying conclusion: it has to be coming somehow from the murderer. But a serial killer who was also a camp counselor that summer and was strongly suspected, has been incarcerated for years.
And that is only part of the mystery. This story is deep and complex and comes to a very satisfying conclusion.
Highly recommended.