Does a bear read in THE WOODS?

Harlan Coben is a magician. He may write “author” on his income tax form, but his stock-in-trade is sleight-of-hand. When David Copperfield makes the Statue of Liberty disappear, everyone smiles in acknowledging the nifty trick. Coben makes his brand of magic seem real.

In “The Woods,” a twenty-year-old mystery comes back to haunt Paul Copeland, now a New Jersey county prosecutor. His sister disappeared way back then, along with another teenager – both believed to be victims of a serial killer. When detectives find news clippings related to the decades old murder in the pockets of a murder victim, it puts a new spin on an old investigation.

“Cope” as he is called, has troubling coping with the revelation. The latest victim has old scar – one the prosecutor recognizes from twenty years ago – and, he thinks, if one person could survive that night, then…

Credit Coben’s writing style for drawing readers into the story with the same gullibility as marks watching a game of three-card-monte. You put your money down and believe you can follow the shifting cards, then – Pow! – he’s gotcha. One person says this, another says that. Who is telling the truth?

Maybe, no one.

In most of Coben’s stand-alone novels (those not part of the Myron Bolitar series), an ordinary man has to dig out from extraordinary circumstances. In many ways, this book is a departure. The county prosecutor is a buddy of the governor and has his own political ambitions. Hardly Joe-next-door.

There are no variations on Coben’s pacing.

This book is hard to put down – another credit to the writing – and it is only after closing the cover that some of the elements of “The Woods” come back to haunt. While the curtain is up and the lights are on though, Coben is a master of misdirection.

Nevada Barr the Door!

Tea Shoppe mysteries. Scrapbook mysteries. Cat Who mysteries. Whodunits are either light and breezy – humorous treatment of the dearly departed – or, the police procedural, in which the clues are swept up, sealed into envelopes, and suspects are grilled under glaring bright lamps.

Nevada Barr’s series of park ranger mysteries offer a little of both and a lot of neither.

Anna Pigeon is the pseudo-detective, who – from her position as a National Parks employee – runs into all sorts of misdeeds in protected parks around the country.

In “Blood Lure,” Anna Pigeon heads to the Glacier National Park to learn more about the resident bear population, but is barely (so to speak) in the high country before a body is discovered in the forest. Rangers, who worry about the reputation of their natural-born residents, first suspect that a bear has gone bad, but evidence points in another direction.

The suspects wander in and out, using different trails. Anna Pigeon, (who presumably does not watch horror movies) heads off into a distant area all alone. Not good, Anna.

As with all series books, first-name references abound without any explanation as to how they figure into Anna Pigeon’s life, and first time readers will have to learn which names do not figure into the story at all. Those with the slightest Sherlock-ian skills will have this one deduced early on, and others with lesser patience may enjoy “Blood Lure” better starting at the last paragraphs of chapter one, and skipping the bear-baiting lesson altogether.

Author Barr has a grand following, and perhaps in the just-released hardback “Winter Study” Anna Pigeon is less grumpy, more tolerant, and agreeably inclined toward her co-workers. Of course, characters – real or fiction – can hit low spots now and then.

Who hasn’t growled, bear-like, before that first cup of coffee?