The Boy from the Woods
From the #1 bestselling creator of the hit Netflix series Fool Me Once
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4.3 • 373 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE MATCH AND CREATOR OF HIT NETFLIX DRAMA FOOL ME ONCE
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Thirty years ago, a child was found in the New Jersey backwoods.
He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde.
Now a former soldier and security expert, he lives off the grid, shunned by the community - until they need him.
A child has gone missing. With her family suspecting she's just playing a disappearing game, nobody seems concerned except for criminal attorney Hester Crimstein. She contacts Wilde, asking him to use his unique skills to find the girl.
But even he can find no trace of her. One day passes, then a second, then a third.
On the fourth, a human finger shows up in the mail.
And now Wilde knows this is no game. It's a race against time to save the girl's life - and expose the town's dark trove of secrets...
Also featuring the character of Wilde: The Match - OUT NOW
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'The absolute master' RICHARD OSMAN
'A helter-skelter of a read!' LISA JEWELL
'One of the all-time greats' GILLIAN FLYNN
'One of my favourites' JOHN GRISHAM
'At the top of his game' PETER JAMES
'Never lets you down' LEE CHILD
'Insanely readable' SUNDAY MIRROR
'Coben is a phenomenon' THE TIMES
Harlan Coben, Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller, January 2024
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This Harlan Coben standalone arrived with plenty of people still talking the TV adaptation of his 2015 novel The Stranger. The Boy From The Woods offers similar amounts of suspense and intrigue while adding a new twist on the crime-fighting hero. As a child, central character Wilde was found living in woodland with no memory of how he got there. Now an Army vet-turned-investigator, he seems to have been blessed with preternatural abilities by his feral early years. Drawn into the search for some missing children, he comes up against a Presidential candidate desperately trying to keep a dark past buried. With well-drawn characters and airtight plotting, Coben races us to an ending full of scintillating twists that you know must be coming—you just won’t guess what they are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This subpar thriller from Edgar winner Coben (the Myron Bolitar series) pairs an improbable lead with an improbable plot. In 1986, a boy, who looks to be between six and eight years old, is found living on his own in the woods near Westville, N.J. Flash forward 34 years. The boy is now known simply as Wilde, "a beautiful man with his dark sun-kissed complexion, his build of coiled muscles, his forearms looking like high tension wires." Wilde is also a genius and a brilliant PI. His detective skills are called upon after his late best friend's mother, celebrity lawyer Hester Crimstein, learns from her teenage grandson that a bullied classmate of her grandson, Naomi Pine, has disappeared from her Westville home. Naomi's father falsely claims that his daughter went to visit her mother, raising suspicions of foul play. Naomi's story is somehow connected with the presidential aspirations of Sen. Rusty Eggers, a nihilistic tyrant viewed by some on the left as even more of a threat to America than Donald Trump, a hard-to-swallow plotline that Coben does nothing to make feel plausible. This gifted author is capable of better. 7-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
Good title
The star rating given say it all
Loved it!
All the things I love about Harlan Coben, great story. Hope to see more stories from the boy in the woods...
Meh
Quite liked the ending but getting there was a bit painful. It didn’t pull me in.