The Woods was published by Dutton in 2007, and it is one of Coben’s most emotionally complex standalone novels — a book that combines his trademark twisting plot with a genuine meditation on grief, survival guilt, and the impossibility of escaping the past.
Paul Copeland is a county prosecutor in New Jersey — successful, respected, apparently recovered from the tragedy that defined his youth. Twenty years ago, at a summer camp, four teenagers walked into the woods. Two came back: Paul and his girlfriend Lucy. Two did not: Paul’s sister Camille and Lucy’s boyfriend Gil. The bodies were never found, and the official verdict was that they were killed by a serial murderer active in the area.
Now a body has been found — but it is not Camille or Gil. It is someone else entirely, and the forensic evidence connects it to the summer camp and the night in the woods. Paul’s investigation reopens everything: his relationship with Lucy (long since ended), his guilt about his sister, and the question of what actually happened that night — a question whose answer proves far more complicated than serial murder.
Coben uses the dual timeline with great skill, interweaving the present investigation with flashbacks to the summer camp that gradually reveal the truth about a night that no one remembers correctly.
Collecting The Woods
First edition (Dutton, New York, 2007): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Without jacket: $3–$8