I have had a thriller/mystery itch the past month or so, and this book really hit the spot in that regard. This is my first book by Coben, and gosh where do I start? The ending was a little unsatisfying in some ways, which is to say that I don't thing everyone lived happily ever after, but if you want, you can imagine that they did since he doesn't really say exactly what happens to everyone. There was a bit of humor that kept it from getting too depressing, and some social concepts worth thinking about. My first book by this author, but I'm sure I'll read more. However, it seems that in his quest for fighting back, he opens a can of worms that can never be closed, and that is the rest of the story. But the father of one of the boys is willing to go to great lengths to keep his son out of jail, and has the resources to do this. The prosecutor is certain of his responsibility, which is justice for the girl. The story starts out with a prosecutor trying a case involving a poor black teenaged prostitute/stripper who has accused a couple of rich white college boys of rape.

Most of them get answered in the end, but some are left as an exercise for the reader. but are they really? And are the good guys really good? What's more important, family or justice? All are good questions, but the answers are not always so good, or even so certain. I thought this was a pretty dark mystery, where nothing seems to be certain.

Cope must decide what is better left hidden in the dark and what truths can be brought to the light. Is this homicide victim one of the campers who disappeared with his sister? Could his sister be alive? Cope has to confront so much he left behind that summer twenty years ago: his first love, Lucy his mother, who abandoned the family and the secrets that his Russian parents might have been hiding even from their own children. When a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to Cope, the well-buried secrets of the prosecutor's family are threatened. Balancing family life and a rapidly ascending career as a prosecutor distracts him from his past traumas, but only for so long. Cope, as he is known, is now dealing with raising his six-year-old daughter as a single father after his wife has died of cancer. For Paul Copeland, the county prosecutor of Essex, New Jersey, mourning the loss of his sister has only recently begun to subside. Now, two decades later, they are about to change again. Four families had their lives changed forever. Two were found murdered, and the others were never seen again. Twenty years ago, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night.

The Woods by Harlan Coben