Book Review: The Boy From The Woods by Harlan Coben @HarlanCoben @GrandCentralPub

The Boy from the Woods
Harlan Coben
Grand Central Publishing /Hatchette Book Group, March 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4814-5
Hardcover

The story opens with a young girl, bullied at school and at home, wondering how to get through another day. Then she disappears and the only one who notices is a classmate, himself trying to fit in, who reports the incident to his grandmother. Grandma is Hester Crimstein, a high-powered attorney nobody wants to mess with. Tough, and a TV personality famous for the cases she takes on, she sets in motion a search that has unexpected, and dangerous, results.

Meanwhile, a man called Wilde, a name taken by a boy of unknown identity who simply walked out of the woods one day, is put in charge of discovering the facts behind the girl’s disappearance. Important people may be involved in a case of bullying that turns into something more far-reaching and serious. Hester and Wilde must work their way through an old mystery, even as the fate of the whole country is at stake.

Each of the characters are well-drawn, especially Hester and Wilde. Wilde’s past is an intriguing precept. How could a boy of about six years subsist in the wilderness alone for months—maybe for years? Even he doesn’t know how long he’d been there, nor does he remember his parents or his name. Supposedly, he managed to break into summer homes, find food, clothes, warmth, even watch TV and learn to speak as a tiny child. Frankly, I found the idea a bit unlikely, but hey, I like a good twisty yarn and this is one of them. However, from the first mention of his lost identity, I wondered why Wilde didn’t go the DNA testing route, but not until almost the end did the subject come up. Wilde may have found a clue at last and I can’t wait to read about it.

Reviewed by Carol Crigger, December 2020.
http://www.ckcrigger.com
Author of The Woman Who Built A Bridge (Spur Award Winner), Yester’s Ride,
Hometown Burning and Six Dancing Damsels: A China Bohannon Mystery

Book Review: The Boy From The Woods by Harlan Coben @HarlanCoben @GrandCentralPub

The Boy From The Woods
Harlan Coben
Grand Central Publishing, March 2020
ISBN 978-1-5387-4814-5
Hard Cover

At the start of this novel we are introduced to the boy referred to in the book’s title.  Thirty years ago, Wilde, as he is now known, was discovered living in the woods in a rural area of New Jersey.  According to the police there was never any report of a missing child. No relatives ever came forward to claim him.

Intriguing as that opening of Coben’s new stand alone is, the novel moves to the present and concerns another child who has gone missing. Her name is Naomi Pines and she’s a teenager who attends a local high school in the town of Westville, New Jersey.   Matthew, a  fellow student, is concerned for Naomi’s welfare.  He’s contacted his grandmother, Hester Crimstein, a well-known New York criminal attorney to enlist her help.

Hester sets things in motion in the search to find Naomi, calling on the local police and contacting Wilde, who’d been befriended by Hester’s son David, Matthew’s father, years ago.

The relationships in this novel are complicated and there are a few more characters  to meet who are involved in a political plot pertaining to a candidate running for President of the United States.

I’m sure you’ll agree that this might be hard to keep track of,  but rest assured you are in the hands of a well known and loved Master.  Jump in…you’ll be glad you did.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope Mr. Coben will return to with a sequel so that we might learn more about the Wilde boy from the woods.

Respectfully submitted.

Reviewed by guest reviewer Moyra Tarling, May 2020.

Book Review: The Rat Catchers’ Olympics by Colin Cotterill

The Rat Catchers’ Olympics
A Dr. Siri Paiboun Mystery #12
Colin Cotterill

Soho Crime, August 2017
ISBN 978-1-61695-825-1
Hardcover

First of all, I’ve got to admit I’m horribly musophobic, so the mere title of the book put me off. Then there is the cover. A lurid graphic of a black rat caught in a red fist. What the title had going for it was the word “Olympics” considering the opening ceremony to the winter Olympics in South Korea was, as I write this, only a couple days ago.

Okay, so the Olympics referred to in the book are the Moscow Summer Olympics of 1980, but . . .

Anyway, I delved into the book whose cover led me not to expect much. Boy, was I ever wrong. Only a few pages in I was already in love with the characters, a group of very political Laotians. Old folks, for the most part, including the ex-national coroner of Laos, Dr. Siri Paiboun and his wife Madame Daeng. What a couple, both still filled with youthful exuberance.

In a nutshell, Siri has been invited to head up the Laotian contingent of athletics invited to the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow, Russia, and, in between spurring on some national pride, investigate a nebulous plot to blow someone up. He, nor any of the Laotians, whether the support group or the athletes, give a hoot that the only reason they’ve been invited to Russia is because so many of the competitive countries are boycotting the games. None of them expect to win anything. Just participating is honor enough.

In what could’ve turned into either slapstick humor–the story is written with spot-on timing for the many humorous parts–or centered on the sad history of Laos, with its poverty and political upheaval, the plot is a perfect blend of both. Each is treated with respect for the diverse characters, every single one who is capable of surprising you.

A murder mystery? Well, yes, that’s in the plot, too, but sort of faded into the background on the strength of Cotterill’s characters. As for the rat catchers in the title? They do play their parts and amusing as it is, I’m still musophobic. Even a story this good isn’t going to change that.

Rat Catchers’ Olympics has been added to my Best Books read in 2018 list. I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Carol Crigger, February 2018.
Author of Three Seconds to Thunder, Four Furlongs and Hometown Homicide.

Book Review: Interference by Kay Honeyman

Interference
Kay Honeyman
Arthur A. Levine Books, September 2016
ISBN 978-0-545-81232-0
Hardcover

Kate Hamilton is genetically programmed to fix or make things right. After all, her dad is a U.S. Congressman from North Carolina and her grandfather and great grandfather held a similar office, only in Texas.  When her latest effort to reveal cheating by one of her fellow students at the posh DC high school they attend blows up, thanks to photoshopped and out of context pictures posted online, it also derails her dad’s re-election bid.

Her parents take an unusual tack. They cart Kate off to Red Dirt, Texas where the incumbent who held the seat her grandfather once had, has just died and a special interim election is going to be held. Dad was the star high school quarterback many still remember fondly…Many except Bo Stone who was the player replaced by Dad way back then. Bo is also intent upon running for the vacant seat and his son Kyle is now the quarterback for the local team.

Kate’s upset and angry when they arrive in the middle of nowhere, but no sooner do her parents tell her she can be free of campaigning and be a ‘normal teenager’ (as long as she stays out of the headlines), than Kate starts being seduced by the wide openness of Texas. One of her goals is to get back at her DC tormentor, but do it in an honorable way. She needs lots of volunteer hours as well as more photos for her art portfolio if she wants to get into a school where that is offered and one of three coveted letters of recommendation written by the principal for a graduating senior.

High school in Texas is a far cry from her old school and features a cast of characters that affect her in ways she never expected. There’s Ana Gomez who’s as good, maybe better a photographer than Kate. Ana is still acting like a deer in the headlights after lies were spread by an ex-boyfriend. There’s Ms. Serrano, the yearbook adviser who is more than she seems and challenges Kate in unexpected ways, but most of all, there’s Hunter, who she sees as a rude, slightly antagonistic student, who she first meets when she has her hands in a very embarrassing place when pressed into service by her prickly Aunt Celia to help with a difficult calving at the sanctuary.  Celia has spent her life rescuing stray and abandoned animals of all types (and naming each after a famous politician). She reluctantly accepts Kate’s offer to help out at the refuge near the home her dad inherited.

There aren’t any particularly unique elements in this story, but great recipes come out of common ingredients and that’s the kind of story this is. It’s about Kate’s growing awareness of how she needs to change, who she really is and how a congressman’s daughter can learn to love a small town in Texas as well as a guy she thought cared about someone else. It’s a great read and definitely worth adding to any school or public library caring about offering teens a neat read.

Reviewed by John R. Clark, MLIS, September 2016.

Book Review: Montana by Gwen Florio

Montana
Gwen Florio
Permanent Press, October 2013
ISBN: 978-1-57962-336-4
Hardcover

Foreign correspondent Lola Wicks has just returned from Afghanistan, a place where “filing the story and staying alive remained the only two things that mattered.” She is called back to the home office of her newspaper in Baltimore, where she finds that all the foreign bureaus were being shut due to the faltering US economy and the ensuing layoffs, and is faced with an assignment in the suburbs, told that she is lucky she still has a job.

She is directed by her editor to take some R&R, since she’d not taken a vacation in years. Still determined to return to the war zone (reasoning that “once he saw the stories she’d file when she got back to Kabul, he’d realize it was a mistake to close the bureau”), she decides to first visit her friend Mary Alice, who she hadn’t seen in five years after their career paths diverged, with Lola going to Afghanistan and Mary Alice to Montana to work at a small local paper. When Lola arrives at the cabin in Magpie, Montana, she is faced with a grotesque scene: Seeing dead bodies in Afghanistan was one thing, but finding her best friend shot to death was quite another. Despite her planned return to Kabul, she vows to herself that if the apparently incompetent sheriff could not find the killer, she would.

Finding any leads proves a difficult task, made harder when she is told she cannot leave Magpie, as she is a person of interest. Her reaction? “I’ve got a dead friend and a sheriff who won’t let me leave town until he figures out how she got that way.” Other deaths soon follow. Lola is told “Bodies [are] dropping like flies. How do you like Montana so far?” (A place, btw, that she finds can have snow in June.) After initially staying in a local hotel, she decides to stay in Mary Alice’s cabin, and there are wonderful passages about her friend’s dog and horse, neither of which is an animal with which she has had any experience. Her pursuit of the investigation leads to some unexpected twists and turns in a well-fashioned plot, and a whale of an ending.

A gripping and fast read, beautifully written, the novel is recommended.

Reviewed by Gloria Feit, May 2014.