From Barnes & Noble
Parents have an inborn right to get worried, so it seemed reasonable that after a suicide at their son's school, Tia and Mike Baye would secretly insert spyware into his home computer. For the first several days, their furtive surveillance uncovers nothing alarming, or at least nothing completely unexpected on the PC of a rambunctious 16-year-old boy. Then, just as the Baye's worries begin to ease, their world is jolted by a single cryptic six-word message: "Just stay quiet and all safe." When Adams goes missing, full-throttle terror enters their lives. A whodunit ripped from every parent's worst fear.
From the Publisher
Mike held his son’s hand and told him to “hold tight,” and he could feel the little hand dig into his but the crush got bigger and the little hand slipped from his and Mike felt that horrible panic, as if a wave hit them at the beach and it was washing his baby out with the tide.
The separation lasted only a few seconds, ten at the most, but Mike would never forget the spike in his blood and the terror of those brief few moments.
Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they’d become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer Hill - the latest in a string of issues at school - they can’t help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on Adam’s computer, and within days they are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent addressed to their son: “Just stay quiet and all safe.”
Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son’s death…and he wasn’t alone. She thinks it is Adam Baye standing just outside the camera’s range; but when Adam goes missing, it soon becomes clear that something deep and sinister has infected their community. For Tia and Mike Baye, the question they must answer is this: When it comes to your kids, is it possible to know too much?
Chicago Sun-Times
The Woods might just be the best thing Coben has written. . . . A gripping story, filled with fine characters and dark secrets.
Boston Sunday Globe
Gripping. . . . The characters are authentic, the writing spare, and the courtroom drama so riveting.
Orlando Sentinel
Harlan Coben has been keeping me awake at night. . . . I devoured his latest bestseller The Woods. . . . Fortunately you won't have to worry about navigating impenetrable woods. Coben is the perfect guide, clearing all the hurdles with maximum speed and efficiency.
Publishers Weekly
Parents will find this compulsive page-turner from Edgar-winner Coben (The Woods) particularly unnerving. A sadistic killer is at play in suburban Glen Rock, N.J., outside New York City, but somehow he's less frightening than the more mundane problems that send ordinary lives into chaos. How do you weigh a child's privacy against a parent's right to know? How do you differentiate normal teenage rebelliousness from out-of-control behavior? When and how do you intervene if suicidal signs appear? Other issues include single parenting; career versus family; marital honesty; and how much information you should share with a child at what age. Coben plucks each of these strings like a virtuoso as Mike and Tia Baye try to deal with the increasing withdrawal of their 16-year-old son, Adam, after a friend's suicide. A pair of brutal, seemingly senseless killings, punctuate the unfolding domestic troubles that ratchet up the tension and engulf the Baye family, their friends and neighbors in a web of increasing tragedy. The "this could be me" factor lends poignancy to the thrills and chills. (Apr.)
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Steve Forbes -
Forbes Magazine
An aptly chosen title for Coben's newest novel. As in his previous mesmerizing masterpieces, this one grips you from beginning to end with its sizzling plots, subplots and all-too-human (and sometimes inhuman) characters. It also touches on an increasingly sensitive subject for today's parents-what their kids are doing on the Internet.
In this Coben tale a physician and his lawyer wife, after much agonizing, decide to install spy software in their teenage son Adam's computer. Since the suicide of a friend of Adam's, their son has become remote, withdrawn. But Adam's mother senses something else is at work, and her fears are further aroused when she and her husband come across a cryptic instant-message exchange. Then Adam disappears.
Before the book closes, we come across cyber-bullies, serial killings, a shady teenage hangout club in the Bronx and another explosive topic in these days of DNA testing: Is a kid's father his biological father? (2 June 2008)
Jeff Ayers
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Library Journal
Coben (The Final Detail) continues to dominate the thriller genre in this latest examination of suburbia. Mike and Tia Baye's son Adam delivers typically teen angst to his befuddled family. As a precaution, Mike and Tia invest in a spyware program that will report every keystroke on Adam's personal computer so they can track his movements. The results terrify them, and then Adam disappears. Life moves forward, and the questions become complex: How far would you go to protect your family? How well do you know your children? Coben tackles the troubles not only of the Bayes but also of other families, creating a strikingly realistic X-ray of an entire neighborhood. A fast and exhilarating roller-coaster ride that you don't want to end, but hold on tight. Then take the time to hug your kids. A mandatory purchase. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]
Kirkus Reviews
How much do you trust your children, and what would you do if your efforts to keep tabs on them pushed them even further away?Adam Baye is a good kid, but ever since he gave up hockey, the sport that seemed destined to finance his college education, his parents, a New Jersey transplant surgeon and a Manhattan lawyer, have been worried. So Mike and Tia install spyware on their son's computer. Once they can follow his every keystroke, visit every site he has logged onto and read every e-mail he has sent and received, they quickly realize that Adam is keeping dangerous secrets from them-so dangerous, in fact, that when he goes AWOL one night and refuses to answer his cell phone, Mike snoops further, using a GPS tracking service to follow Adam to Club Jaguar, way on the other side of the tracks. For his pains, Mike gets beaten up, then pulled in by the FBI, who tell him that the club, which ostensibly provides a haven where teens can safely act out, is a cover for some major felonies. What do the Bayes' problems have to do with the thoughtless remark with which schoolteacher Joe Lewiston ruined the life of Adam's sister Jill's best friend, Yasmin Novak? Or the revelation that desperately ill Lucas Loriman's father can't donate a kidney to his son because he's not the boy's father? Or the murdered Jane Doe whom Essex County Chief Investigator Loren Muse (The Woods, 2007, etc.) is trying to identify?There are surprises aplenty, but this time the ambitious scope-the anatomy of suburban vice-works against suspense; there are just too many cutaways to other embattled characters you want to root for but can't remember why.
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